Palau

Palau’s one of our two EDTO routes on the 737.

It’s also labeled an “isolated airport” where our dispatch rules concerning alternate airport is exempt, simply because there is no suitable alternate airports nearby.

I’ve always wanted to go there because it’s ‘s only reachable by our 737 fleet due to the short runway. I didn’t have much hopes because we operate there twice a week and it’s reserved to relatively low timed FOs (I was approaching the end of my low time period) due to the company’s rules on Captain-FO experience requirements. (Meaning experienced captains fly with new FO’s and vice versa). So I was very lucky.

When I departed from Incheon, there was a Typhoon (Named Solik) brewing from just west of Guam. Conveniently, it was supposed to be along route route.

Because of that, the dispatchers tried to change our routing. However they couldn’t get a different overflight permit from the Japanese FIR in time. So we decided to depart with the routing and request wx deviations. Over the ocean, we tend to be able to deviate a lot more than over land. At the end of the day, the Typhoon wasn’t supposed go be penetrating through our route, but rather we’d be scratching through the western edge over the Pacific Ocean.

We got to the aircraft and immediately started setting up the plane for departure. Because it’s an EDTO flight, we had to check the fuel crossfeed, check our HF Radio and SELCAL during setup and leave our APU on for the duration of the flight

All of the sudden the firebell went off in the cockpit. “Fire Warning. FWD Cargo.” I immediately remembered that they were spraying insecticides in the cargo hold so I advised the captain and we just cancelled the alarm and went about doing our things.

When our time was up, we got our clearance and departed on time.

In the air, we checked our crossfeed valve and weather at our EDTO ERA and fuel and we entered our EDTO flight south of Japan. We were flying over the ocean alone. There were no other aircraft nearby and our VHF radios started to become a little bit unclear with static noise. Fukuoka control handed us off to Tokyo Radio and we were on HF. I called in and asked for our SELCAL check and soon the chime sounded in the cockpit, confirming our SELCAL is working well.

Every hour or so, I printed the new weather using our ACARS but as we got to our EDTO ETP, We couldn’t receive anything because we didn’t have a SATCOM in this aircraft. We decided to carry on, since the weather at Palau was supposed to be pretty good. Adding to the difficulty was the storm which was adding a lot of static to our HF radio. At some point we just couldn’t understand a thing they were saying. It was about a balloon launch but I couldn’t make out the coordinates or time. We contacted our second HF frequency. It was to no avail. We went back to Tokyo Radio and asked them to relay Oakland Centre’s message. But Tokyo Radio couldn’t understand my English. We gave up for about 10 min and then our EDTO Exit point was approaching. The HF radio started to become audible again and we were given our “cruise clearance” to Palau. With such clearance, you can descend whenever you wish and conduct an approach. They reserve the airspace for you for a while.

We turned off our APU at the exit point and cruised for another several minutes before we started to descend. I contacted Koror radio for our intentions.

The arrival wasn’t particularly difficult but the visibility was about 3 miles with patches of dense fog. We were able to see our runway before we got to our MDA and we continued to land.

 

After landing, I called the office to report our arrival and we walked straight to our crew shuttle.

Palau is a quiet island in the middle of the Pacific. It felt very untouched by humans aside from the roads and airport. We stayed at Palau Pacific Resort and had a really good time there. I got myself a scuba licence while I was there. It was a magical experience with the turtles and giant clams and the tropical fish.

Even snorkelling from the hotel’s beach was very fun. I was able to see beautiful diverse marine species.

It was a truly beautiful island. And I was very thankful for the 4 nights of stay created by our schedule. It was a paid vacation, basically.

But those 5 days passed by rather quickly and it was already our time to head back. Solik was just off the west coast of Korea and I was hoping we’d be delayed but that didnt’t happen.

Luckily we were given an aircraft with SATCOM this time, so the stress about communicating on our crappy HF was relieved.

Due to the variable winds (in which we assume we have a tailwind) and our heavy load, we decided to take off using Flaps 15. But otherwise the departure was normal.

At one point we couldn’t establish radio contact with Oakland centre so we called them up using our SATCOM. There was a super grumpy controller on the line and he snapped at us “what do you want! Why are you calling me?” What an unpleasant arsehole. We kept our conversation short and I warned them if he talked like that again, I’d file a complaint. He hung up on us.

We kept on checking the weather to check on Solik’s progress. It seemed to go right through Korea but without much damage. Even the winds weren’t that bad.

Finally when we arrived at Incheon, the winds were quiet manageable and we arrived without any challenge. The Typhoon had already made it’s way to the east coast of Korea and it had been downgraded to a Tropical Storm half way across Korea.

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It was a magical stay and I’d love to go back there. Hopefully I get another chance to go there before I upgrade to a widebody.