Danika’s Trip Report – First Section

[Danika]

Below, the enticing little island slid slowly rearward. Danika returned her attention to the cockpit. She scanned the instrument panel, something that she did automatically every few minutes.

Her father had spared no expense on the instrument panel while refurbishing the Goose. It was thoroughly modern, including a Garmin aera 560 GPS that told her pretty well everything she needed to know about the aircraft’s current location in space at time. It displayed every highway, river, shoreline, airport and navigational aid that was in the aircraft’s vicinity. It also indicated the aircraft’s groundspeed, track and its GPS altitude. Navigation made simple thanks to modern technology.

Completing the scan of the main instrument panel she glanced up at the engine instruments which were mounted in a cluster on the ceiling panel next to the throttles. Everything looked nominal.

The little island hadn’t completely relinquished its grasp on Danika. Curious, she tapped the controls of the GPS display to see if it had a name. It did: Cayos de Dios. Good thing she hadn’t yielded to the temptation to drop in; Cayos de Dios was Cuban territory. The Cubans would not have looked favourably upon an unapproved visit. She recalled an incident that had taken place in the mid 1990’s where two American civil aircraft, which Cuba claimed had been operating without authorization over Cuban territorial waters, had been brutally shot down by one of the Republic’s MiG-29 jet fighters.

Cuban air traffic control requires a minimum of forty-eight hours prior approval for requests to enter their airspace. This had delayed Danika in Key West for two days while she awaited her authorization. Her Cuban over-flight request had been granted, costing her fifty U.S. dollars – another means of generating foreign currency income for the Cuban state. Her permit allowed Buccaneer’s Bliss one transit of the island, north to south, via the Giron Air Corridor, one of three such trans-island flight paths. The Giron Corridor is a ten mile wide pathway across the island from just west of the Hicacos peninsula on the north shore to the Zapata marshland in the south.

Danika was pleasantly surprised when the Giron Corridor was displayed on her GPS screen. Her father had updated the unit with Caribbean data but, for some reason, she hadn’t expected the Cuban data to be accurate.

Her transit clearance had a thirty minute validity window, which she’d hit with no problem. When she checked in with Havana Air Traffic Control she’d been handled promptly and courteously.

“Havana Control, this is Canadian civil Charlie-Foxtrot-Mike-Papa-Golf, IFR, thirty-five north of Varedaro at niner thousand, heading one-seven-zero.”

Immediately, and in impeccable English, Havana ATC came back, “Foxtrot-Mike-Papa-Golf, this is Havana Control – check you at niner thousand – squawk ident.”

“Mike-Papa-Golf, identing now . . .”

Danika leaned forward and pushed the little button labelled ‘Ident’ on the transponder module mounted in the instrument panel. This caused an electronic identification signal to be transmitted from the Secondary Surveillance Radar antenna mounted on the Goose’s fuselage. The signal was picked up by the Cuban radar receiver and processed by the ground-based equipment, ultimately causing a target that represented the airplane’s position to blink on the radar display that the Cuban controller was monitoring.

“Foxtrot-Mike-Papa-Golf, Havana, you are radar identified – altimeter is three-zero-one-four.”

“Havana, Mike-Papa-Golf . . . check the altimeter three-zero-one-four.” Danika turned the little knob on her altimeter to adjust it to the local barometric pressure. “I’m requesting clearance to transit the Giron corridor . . . I have my request approval number when you are ready to copy,” she said.

“Foxtrot-Mike-Papa-Golf, go ahead your transit authorization.”

“My request approval is Golf Sierra Bravo . . one, one . . dash . . six, four, seven.”

“Mike-Papa-Golf, thank you, you are cleared for a Giron transit, report entering the corridor inbound.”

Danika thought it curious that ATC wanted her to give them a call at the inbound point since they had her on radar and knew exactly where she was. Must be bored down there, she thought. Indeed, there was very little radio traffic on the frequency. She also recognized that it was not uncommon for male controllers to be chatty with female pilots, not that female pilots were that much of a rarity these days, but boys will be boys . . .

As a young, single and attractive redhead Danika had received her share of sometimes unwanted male attention; although, to be truthful, most of it wasn’t that unwanted. She enjoyed the occasional flirt and appreciated those that were well executed. Danika stood five foot seven inches, but her slim frame made her look somewhat taller. It was when she was wearing her uniform that she garnered the most attention. Some men seemed to be attracted to women who were in positions of authority – or maybe it was the uniform fantasy thing. And the fact that she’d had her uniforms tailored to hug her athletic form did little to discourage them.

She keyed the control yoke’s transmit button to respond to the Havana controller’s request, “Cleared the Giron transit, and I’ll call you the corridor inbound . . thank you . . Mike-Papa-Golf.”

Back home in Vancouver, Danika was a commercial pilot. She flew right seat in a thirty passenger turbo-prop short-hauler for a small regional airline that operated out of the South Terminal at Vancouver International Airport. They serviced numerous small communities up the coast from the Lower Mainland. For the most part, Danika found the job routine and boring, except when the weather was down, at which point it became a pain in the ass. Boring it may be, but she was building hours and experience. Soon she would be promoted to the left seat of the Saab. She would put in a year or so as Captain and then apply for a First Officer job with one of the big airlines.

But for the next three weeks she was on a leave of absence. She just wished that it was under better circumstances.