White African Slave

By MikeMcDougall

White African Slave, part two ‘Just One More Tour’...continues the story of South African, Katherine Stewart’s determined mission to become an airline pilot, fighting racism and sexism every step of the way in post-apartheid South Africa.
Leaving her home and husband behind once more, she heads back to West Africa to fly single engine Fedex cargo planes over the jungle at night from one unstable, civil war ravaged country to the next, her determination strengthened by the assurances of the Colonel in charge of the South African Police Air Wing that she will be offered a position on her return and this will be her last mission into the Black Hole of Africa.
Events don’t unfold as expected though, as a new civil war, nefarious mining outfits, diamond smugglers and the clandestine past activities of some of her ex-military fellow air crew, combine with further corrupt and nepotistic influences back in South Africa to totally redirect her planned career path even as she receives an invitation to begin the notoriously gruelling South African Airways recruitment process.
About the author:
Mike McDougall was born in the UK, and is a professional helicopter pilot and instructor, with a variety of past careers including life guard, farm and construction labourer, house painter, marketing analyst, IT project manager and TV producer.
In 1995, with a friend, he drove a Land Rover from England to Cape Town where he met his future wife, raising tens of thousands of dollars for charity and forming a lifelong bond with Africa in the process.
Whilst his conventional employment roles took him all over the USA, Canada, Caribbean, Europe, Hong Kong and Japan, his work as a pilot on humanitarian missions involved working in Sumatra in response to the tsunami (featuring on SA TV show ‘Carte Blanche’), then the Pakistan earthquake and in support of Provincial Redevelopment Programmes in Afghanistan. He also flew for the South African National Antarctic Expedition in 2012/13.
White African Slave and Just One More Tour were largely written while on deployment for the UN, providing search and rescue services for peace keeping operations in Sudan, at the end of the civil war.
Mike wrote the books in response to so many people asking why his wife did not walk into a job at South African Airways under the new government’s controversial Affirmative Action policies and to highlight the fact that a white female faces arguably the most prejudice and the most difficult journey of all would-be commercial airline pilots in South Africa.

• Language: English
• Publisher: MikeMcDougall
• Release date: Aug 31, 2016
• ISBN: 9780620707732

Book preview

Dedication

Prologue – Just One More Tour

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

A white woman continues her struggle against sexism and racism

towards her long-held dream of becoming an airline pilot in

post-apartheid South Africa

Based on a true story

Dedication

For Biggles, because he asked.

Copyright © 2016 Mike McDougall

Published by Mike McDougall Publishing at Smashwords

First edition 2016

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or any information storage or retrieval system without permission from the copyright holder.

The Author has made every effort to trace and acknowledge sources/resources/individuals. In the event that any images/information have been incorrectly attributed or credited, the Author will be pleased to rectify these omissions at the earliest opportunity.

Edited by Marisa Robson for Reach Publishers

Cover designed by Reach Publishers

Website: www.reachpublishers.co.za

E-mail: [e-mail]

Prologue – Just One More Tour

Eight thirty in the morning, Magaliesburg, Pretoria, the Republic of South Africa—the new South Africa—2002. The phone rang in the little townhouse rented by Katherine Stewart and her Scottish husband Andrew, who had already left for work. Still in bed, Katherine was not happy to have been disturbed.

‘Oh, fuck off!’ she said into her pillow, but the phone continued to ring.

She reached out and picked up the handset without lifting her head. Her long blonde hair fell across her face as she answered groggily. At this ungodly hour, surely it could only be her mother?

She forced herself to say, ‘Hello?’

‘Hello, may I speak with Katherine Stewart please?’ asked a female voice with an immediately recognisable Cape Coloured accent.

‘Mmm, speaking,’ Katherine confirmed, now half awake. Fucking telesales agent! Shit! She rolled over, struggled to sit up, and pushed her hair from her eyes. The nicotine cravings that had been nudging the edges of her dreamless sleep intensified immediately.

‘Hello, this is Francina from Human Resources at South African Airways. Is this a good time to talk?’ the intruder continued, reading mechanically from a script. An instant adrenaline rush set Katherine’s consciousness on fire, taking the edge off the craving to do the same to her first cigarette of the morning.

Fuck me! she thought, SA fuckin’ A! Why are they calling me?

‘Ja, yes, this is a good time,’ she assured Francina, her heart pounding and her hands starting to shake slightly with part controlled, desperate and fearful hope.

‘Okay, thank you. This is to advise you that we have received and processed your application. Please confirm that you are still interested in a flight deck position with South African Airways?’ Francina said.

What the fuck do you think? Katherine thought to herself. No, I like flying overloaded cargo planes over West Africa at night. Why would I want to fly a nice, wide body jet all over the world, stay in five star hotels, and get paid shitloads of money? Duh!

‘Yes, I am. Very much so,’ Katherine confirmed, thinking, more than anything! More than you can possibly imagine!

‘Okay, good. Then I just need to tell you that we would like you to undertake the selection process. I will be in touch with you again shortly to arrange scheduling the first stage of the interview process.’

Chapter 1

It was a typical night in the West African city of Abidjan, commercial centre and former capital of the Ivory Coast: hot, sticky, mosquito ridden, and stinking of rancid cocoa. Katherine recognised the stench immediately as she emerged from the airport terminal building—like dark chocolate vomited out onto a tropical sidewalk and left there until the fly-infested, putrid mess began to give off a truly fetid reek.

Her passage through immigration and customs had been easier on this, her second tour of duty, because she was dressed in her pilot’s uniform. On her previous visit she had been processed with the resentful and arrogant attitude that white South Africans had come to expect from petty officialdom in many other African countries. This time however, her official pilot’s rank had carried her through rapidly and un-harassed except for a few unabashed looks of surprise that the ‘captain’ was female.

She was even smiling as she looked around for her transport but that was not with any pleasure at being back in Abidjan. On the contrary, her husband back home had just sent an SMS to say that she had been offered a pilot’s job with the South African Police Air Wing, meaning that this would most probably be her last tour flying single-engine Cessna Caravans over the jungles of West Africa for Federal Express. That was the reason for her smile—possible escape from the odorous, onerous armpit of Africa!

She recognised their local driver, Anthony, loitering by the exit, smoking and trying to avoid her gaze. She picked up her carry on bag and dragged her suitcase over to him.

‘Bonsoir, Madame,’ Anthony offered, not exactly in a friendly way but he was not really rude either so Katherine took it as a sign of respect coming from a French speaking black man.

‘Bonsoir, Anthony,’ she replied, ‘Ça va?’

‘Oui madame,’ he replied, not bothering to ask how she was in return, but he did take hold of the smaller of her two bags and carry it to the minibus outside. Katherine followed him, smiling to herself.

Anthony threw her carry on bag into the back of the vehicle and then stood to the side and watched her struggling to lift her main suitcase in by herself. She was not going to let this get to her or ask him for help so she heaved and shoved till it went in and then climbed aboard after it.

Taking her seat, she immediately pulled out her Sony Discman, cued Nickelback’s Silver Side Up, and closed her eyes, allowing Chad Kroeger to extract her consciousness from West Africa and transport it to Alberta, Canada for the duration of the drive to the company apartments. Previous experience had taught her that it was better not to see or hear the many near misses they would survive on the short trip into the city. Nevertheless, through the music, she still heard the incessant hooting of the van’s horn, felt the frequent swerves around other vehicles and the repeated stops at police, military or fake road blocks for the payment of ‘tolls’, bribes or cigarette based ‘taxes’ for driving along the potholed, cracked and greasy highway. In her mind’s eye, she could track their progress between drooping palm trees and the erratically farmed enclosures and paddies lining the route, until they entered the rubbish strewn, stinking back streets and grey, low rise brick buildings of the suburbs, the decades old, green glass and concrete high rises of down town in the distance.

She did not open her eyes again until they bumped up the pavement into the covered parking area adjacent to their accommodation. Suddenly, she was there again, in the same place, with the same low clouds overhead, and the stench of decayed cocoa pervading everything. There was no one outside in the grassy area between the two accommodation blocks or around the small pool, although she could see someone through the window in the farther block sitting in half darkness at the PC.

Home, sweet home, she mused ironically.

Opening the minibus door herself, she climbed out with her flight bag. She left her suitcase for Anthony who - reluctantly and with great sighs and grunts of apparent exertion - laboured it out of the vehicle and down onto the concrete path next to the minibus. He left it there. That he was not prepared to carry it to whichever room she had been allocated did not really surprise her. She was, however, pleasantly taken aback when she realised that she had her own room this time.

‘Here is your key,’ announced Anthony, holding it out for her. She knew the room. It was the one that Dianne—the androgynous captain from Cape Town—had occupied on her last tour. Katherine hoped it had been thoroughly cleaned, given Dianne’s rather relaxed attitude to hygiene and tidiness, but she was excited to remember that the tiny room was way too small for a second bed so she would have her own space—at least, unless anything had changed. She fervently hoped not.

She hauled her bag up to the first floor and was fumbling the key into the lock when a door at the other end of the outside landing opened. A tall, muscular black man came out followed by a white female with lank hair. She held a short dressing gown closed as she pulled the man back for one last hard kiss on the mouth. It was Caroline, the other female co-pilot, still seemingly hell bent on reinforcing every stereotype that women of negotiable sexuality had ever been accused of. Katherine immediately wondered what this particular man had told Caroline he could do for her career.

He turned towards Katherine to make his way to the stairs. She quickly threw her carry on bag into the room and turned to drag her suitcase in behind her, letting the door swing shut just before the man passed. Safely inside, she fished out her mobile phone and messaged Andrew to say that she had made it safely. Then she prepared for bed.

Her first flight was rostered for the next evening so she slept until mid-morning and then went to the kitchen for a cup of coffee.

On the way down the stairs from her room, she met Frans, another co-pilot who had been home at almost the same time as she had. From him, she quickly learned that Dianne and Jake, her favourite captain, would both be coming back in about a week. Also, that Charl Swart, the former Cessna Caravan fleet captain, had been moved. He was going to fly Fedex’s larger sixteen tonne twin turboprop ATR 42 with Wouther, the ex-special forces human autopilot.

In the kitchen she met Abel, a dark haired, good looking Caravan captain of medium height, who told her he was from near Bloemfontein and had been in Abidjan for nearly a month. Katherine immediately noticed how very slowly he moved while he made himself coffee. When they sat down at the table, he explained why in a heavy Afrikaans accent.

‘Malaria,’ he told her. ‘Nearly finished with the treatment.’

‘Did you catch it here?’ she asked nervously.

‘Ja, pretty sure. I left a window open one night about two weeks ago. I think I got it then.’

‘Did you get it badly?’ she asked.

‘Ja, this is the first day in a week I can walk,’ he stated matter-of-factly. Katherine mentally reminded herself to maintain her practice of burning mosquito coils in her room twenty-four hours a day.

Once the caffeine had done its work, she slipped easily back into the flow, showering and dressing after lunch, and then quickly reviewing her procedures and checklists so she was all ready to go an hour before her scheduled departure. Her captain met her at the minivan. She remembered that his name was Wayne. He was a smartly turned out but average looking guy with black hair in a crew cut, a slight lisp, and a devilish look in his eye.

They drove to the airport, she and Wayne, with the earpieces of their respective Discmans tightly in their ears and her eyes shut.

At the hangar, Fedex’s two hard-working and dependable Cessna Caravan 208Bs, ‘Slut’ and ‘Slow’, formally registered as ZS-SLT and ZS-SLO, both waited on the tar. Christelle, the Fedex base manager, seemed genuinely pleased to see Katherine but it was nothing personal.

‘Ah Katerin,’ she called out, ‘‘Ow good to ‘ave you back! Now at least half of my papers will be in order again!’

Unable to reply honestly that she was glad to be back, Katherine told Christelle that it was good to see her again.

Her evening’s flying was a familiar route to the west, first to Roberts International Airport in Monrovia and then to Freetown, Sierra Leone. Wayne’s manner was relaxed and friendly and she soon felt comfortable in the aircraft again after her four weeks’ leave. The two pilots exchanged basic personal information then chatted about their company, ACS - the South African provider of aircraft and crew to Fedex - contract life, and the challenges of being white in the new South Africa.

About an hour out of Roberts heading for Freetown, they were listening to the airliners giving position reports as they routed to and from Europe, communicating directly with each other as they passed through the uncontrolled ‘Black Hole of Africa’.

First, someone with a stiff English accent made a radio call from a British Airways long-haul flight with a Speedbird call sign. Then they heard a South African with a heavy accent calling from an Emirates flight on its way to Dubai, followed by a more relaxed but still precise Virgin Atlantic broadcast and a ‘Springbok’-South African Airways – Airbus on its way to London. The Virgin pilot reported that they were overhead Lagos at thirty-three thousand feet, flight level three three zero. Then there was a strange and alarming radio call.

‘Er….all traffic near to Lagos, on frequency one two six sev-EN,’ came a heavy, uneducated African accent. ‘This is Philemon…er…in my micro-lite…at…er…flight level three three zero.’

Katherine glanced at Wayne to see what he made of this unorthodox broadcast claiming to be a microlite over Nigeria at thirty-three thousand feet and was horrified to see his lips moving. He was making the call; he was Philemon! This was the radio frequency on which the transcontinental aircraft of some of the world’s biggest and most prestigious airlines communicated and her captain was attempting a comedy routine impersonating a black African in a microlite.

‘Er…say again, last caller, from Virgin 274?’ came a request from the Virgin flight.

Katherine’s eyes began to hurt they were so wide open now. She was looking across at Wayne in total shock. He keyed the mike and continued.

‘Er…yes…this is Philemon…am at flight level three three zero. Er…I am from my house in Soweto to London…er…for a new job…and am currently…er…overhead Nigeria, Lagos town,’ Wayne announced.

‘Say again your current position and altitude, Virgin 274?’ came the confused voice from the Virgin flight deck. Katherine could just imagine the captain and co-pilot exchanging agitated looks and scanning their Traffic Collision Avoidance System for signs of the other aircraft at their cruising level.

‘Philemon here again. My altitude is er…level three three zero…it is very cold, very cold. And my position now is sitting down…over,’ Wayne replied calmly.

Katherine’s jaw dropped but she could not stop the corners of her lips from curling up despite herself. She put her hand over her mouth to hide her smile.

‘Er...Philemon at 330,’ came the Virgin airliner’s response, ‘confirm that you are overhead Lagos at 330? I say again, confirm Lagos at 330,Virgin 274?’

Before Wayne could reply again there was a curt broadcast in Afrikaans from another station on frequency.

‘Ek dink jy moet terug Jo’burg toe gaan, broer!’ suggested a laughing and unmistakeably South African voice.

Katherine wondered if it had come from SAA or the Emirates flight. An increasing number of South African pilots were joining Emirates having left the country in 1994 to avoid the consequences of so-called democracy, or having since grown disillusioned with the rapid promotion of all too obviously inexperienced and—to their minds—undeserving non-whites in all disciplines of SAA.

‘Ek dink so!’ agreed Wayne, recognising that the joke had gone far enough. He glanced at Katherine and then looked forward into the blackness ahead of their spinning propeller as though nothing had happened. When he looked at her again they both burst out laughing, and were still grinning well after touchdown in Freetown.

Arriving back the next morning, Katherine felt the gritty, scratchy, ‘been up all night’ tiredness hitting her as soon as Anthony had deposited them back at the apartment block. She was satisfied to note, though, that her skills had not left her. She had performed well on the flight.

There was a copy of the new flying roster lying on the table in the kitchen. Reviewing it she saw that both Roland and Jake had come back up the previous night, but catching up with them could wait until after some sleep. She was delighted to be able to shut the door of her own room behind her, take a rapid shower, and slide dozily into bed. She fell asleep quickly, her warm, fuzzy fatigue edged with the subtle but ever-present metallic taste of loneliness and isolation.

Her next flight, that night, was with a new pilot she had never met. Frans introduced them to each other, shouting to her from the kitchen as she passed by to check her emails. His name was André. He was of medium height with a flabby build and his gut, covered by a cheap, thin pilot shirt, pushed out over the belt that held up his badly fitting chinos.

His most noticeable feature was an angry red scar, ten centimetres long and about a centimetre wide, extending from just in front of his ear up into his hairline on the right side of his face. Katherine tried not to look at it as she greeted him, and as they briefed for their upcoming flight. She found him pleasant but a little creepy. She soon excused herself to make her personal preparations.

First she changed into her uniform and then went to wait her turn on the PC while Wayne laboriously typed a mail to his family with two fingers and a great many mis-keys. When he had finished and sent it he turned to her.

‘Sorry I took so long. Not much of a typist!’ he apologised.

‘No problem,’ Katherine replied, standing to take his seat. Wayne glanced at her uniform.

‘Who are you flying with tonight?’ he asked.

‘Er… this guy André. I just met him in the kitchen.’

‘Venter?’ Wayne asked.

‘Ja, I think that was his name,’ said Katherine.

‘Too many doughnuts?’ Wayne asked, blowing out his cheeks. Katherine could not help laughing.

‘Ja, that’s him,’ she confirmed.

‘Oh,’ Wayne’s humorous expression disappeared and was replaced by another that Katherine could not read. He seemed to be trying to convey something but attempting to avoid it at the same time. She looked at him curiously and waited.

‘What?’ she finally asked.

‘It’s nothing,’ Wayne weaselled, moving to the doorway.

‘No, what? Tell me!’ Katherine insisted. Wayne paused with the door open and looked straight into her eyes.

‘Just be careful,’ he said quietly, turned and closed the door behind him.

Katherine stared after Wayne for a couple of seconds, then shrugged and sat down at the computer. She paused for a moment, wondering what he had meant, and then turned her attention to the PC. There was a mail from Andrew but it was just a general message of support and love with a brief description of his new student, an American who wanted to become a game capture pilot. It had only been a couple of days but she was nevertheless disappointed that he had not yet booked a ticket to come up and visit her as promised. She typed a quick reply, sent it, and went nervously to meet André at the minibus.

Chapter 2

The journey to the airport was very unpleasant. André insisted on talking to her the whole way, preventing her from putting in her earphones and shutting off her senses. Initially he spoke about their flight, and then started criticising ACS’s management. He offered nothing new, voicing the same gripes and criticisms that everybody had, and she resented having to hear them again from this uncharismatic and unnerving person. Worse, with him talking to her she could not ignore the traffic. Three near misses on the short trip had her nerves jangling by the time they arrived at the airport.

Unfortunately the flight was entirely smooth, with only a layer of calm stratus clouds at about two thousand feet above the ground and another of alto stratus far above them at, she estimated, about seventeen or eighteen thousand feet. A few stars were even visible through the odd gap. She would have preferred the weather to have demanded more attention and flight management to give her a break from André’s monotonous, irritating voice as he recounted mind-numbingly dull anecdotes about having grown up in the Free State, the agriculturally dominated, central province of South Africa.

It took her almost till final approach into Accra—the first stop of their overnight run—to reach a state of relative calm again. By this time, André’s constant talking had become a background hum that she had tuned out, responding to his constant stream of negative comments with the occasional nod, smile, or ‘ja, nee’, the South African ‘yes-no’ catch-all phrase.

She landed, taxied, and supervised the refuelling while he bored the loaders and Fedex Ghana’s local representative. The second leg farther east along the coast to Tokoin airport in Lome, Togo was slightly less tedious as navigation around several large thunderstorms occupied their attention. With André’s mind—and more importantly, its operation of his mouth—focussed on the task at hand, Katherine observed that he became noticeably rather taciturn and intense. She agreed with each of his avoidance routing decisions and he demonstrated a very thorough knowledge of both meteorological theory and local thunderstorm characteristics.

After picking up four hundred kilograms of additional freight and topping up their tanks, it was already two thirty in the morning local time—their scheduled departure slot back to their Abidjan base. As soon as they were airborne, Katherine turned on the weather radar and immediately saw that it was going to be a difficult flight.

The thunderstorms they had missed on the way in had intensified and spread out. Aiming for the calmer green and yellow coloured patches on their weather radar, they dodged the first few developing storm cells—shown in bright red on the display—and climbed to their normal cruising altitude of ten thousand feet, flight level 100.

As they travelled through the ink-black darkness over Ghana towards the capital, Accra, it became increasingly difficult to find a red-free route towards Abidjan. They were also frequently lifted and harshly dropped by pockets of turbulence.

‘Maybe we should turn back or land at Accra and wait it out?’ suggested Katherine, scanning the weather radar beam up as far as it would go in an attempt to identify the tops of the giant cumulonimbus storm clouds. She found that they were too large—the beam couldn’t angle high enough.

‘The clouds are off the top of the scope at a hundred miles. That means that they are way higher than we can fly from just past Accra.’

‘Ag, ja but Christelle will have a fit if we make an extra landing or get delayed,’ André replied. ‘Let’s see what it’s like past Accra. Maybe we’ll see a way through when we’re closer.’

Katherine paused to think and then decided to concur with the captain’s plan for now. They flew on.

Passing abeam Accra there was no change in the conditions. In fact the weather worsened slightly. With rain now smashing against the windscreen, Katherine was becoming really nervous about being thrown around in the clouds as she peered, first into the darkness for the worst of the lightning ahead, and then down at the weather radar. There were no gaps in the red on the radar screen in any direction around them. André’s decision had effectively boxed them into a corner with no way around or back.

‘Turning on ice light,’ she called, switching on the external light that illuminated the wing, allowing them to check for the formation of ice. Ice could be deadly. Not only did it add weight to the aircraft, freeze control surfaces, and block air intakes, most seriously, ice could disturb the airflow over the wing, reducing and even destroying its ability to create the lift needed to keep the aircraft airborne.

The wings showed the beginnings of a slow build up of white frost. Katherine checked the Outside Air Temperature gauge. It was minus ten degrees Celsius. This was okay, unusual in West Africa even at 10,000 feet, but it was at just above and just below zero degrees that the rain could freeze and create glazed ice—the really dangerous type—as it ran back along the wing.

The turbulence was becoming extremely unpleasant. It bounced them several times a minute, causing the autopilot to kick out each time and forcing them to fly by hand until conditions were temporarily calm enough to re-engage it. They had just under twenty-five miles to run to Abidjan when they finally reached the tower on the radio, and Katherine requested the surface weather from the tower controller. He told them the cloud base was at three hundred feet—just above the minimum they needed for an instrument approach—but there were thunderstorms present all over the airfield. He also warned them that there was wind shear—the sudden and large change in wind direction notoriously responsible for so many airline accidents in recent years—on final approach. Not something Katherine wanted to hear.

Most large airline passenger jets from countries in the developed world had by then been fitted with wind shear detectors but the little ‘Van had nothing like that, and at night, it would be impossible for them to spot a possible wind shear area until they were already under its influence.

The autopilot had kicked out once more and André had been hand-flying the aircraft while Katherine was busy on the radio. She glanced at him and noticed that he was totally absorbed by the flight instruments and sweating profusely. In a moment of calm, she re-engaged the autopilot for him and assessed their situation.

‘Twenty four miles to run to Abidjan and no sign of a gap in the weather,’ she summarised. ‘Remaining fuel endurance one hour and twenty minutes. Point of equal time Accra to Abidjan passed.’ She stopped talking as the ‘Van was thrown suddenly left and right and then forced down so abruptly that they were lifted against their safety belts. The alarm sounded as the autopilot kicked out again and André fought the ‘Van back into a level attitude. Katherine re-engaged the autopilot and André spoke for the first time in about ten minutes.

‘Maybe we should have gone to Accra like you said,’ he admitted.

Too late now, thought Katherine, you fat idiot!

‘Insufficient fuel for flight to alternate, approach, go around and fifteen minutes holding,’ she advised him flatly, referring to the minimum amount of fuel legally required to return to Accra.

They continued in this fashion, periodically checking for clear ice on the wings as they bounced along through the darkness. A series of intense storm cells shook them about in all three dimensions as André battled to compensate until relative calm had returned and the autopilot could be put back in charge. As they flew through the centre of each cell, they sat listening to the hum of the engine and propeller and the splatter of rain hammering on the windscreen as the autopilot carried them smoothly forward for five minutes at a time. During these short periods Katherine tried not to think about the consequences of an engine failure or the build up of ice on the wings.

I don’t want to die like this! thought Katherine more than once. I should have said something, been stronger. This was a stupid idea! We should be sitting on the ground in Accra waiting this out. We are not an airliner; we’re in a fucking Caravan! We should not be here. Please God let me get through this one and I’ll never do this again.

Eventually it was time for the approach and they requested and received descent permission from the controller.

‘I think you had better fly the approach…I’m exhausted!’ said André in a shaky voice. His eyes were wide with panic in his sweaty face.

Katherine opened her mouth to disagree but then saw how tired he was from having flown through the turbulence and realised he was right. They should not have been in this situation but now that they were, it was the right thing to do.

You arse! she thought, you made a really stupid decision that I should not have agreed with—so I am just as dumb—and now when the captain is supposed to do his thing in a difficult situation you have to hand over to me, the junior. I will never, ever let you or anyone else put me in this position again!

Following the approach procedure, she veered off their previous course to intercept the ILS and advised André that she had done so. He started in his seat, suddenly realising that he had to make the necessary radio call. He made a complete mess of it, confusing the tower and himself. Katherine groaned inwardly, realising that for the purposes of safe flying, she was on her own.

She spoke to the tower herself, confirming her intentions and requesting a wind check. The tower advised her of the wind direction and told her that it was gusting up to fifty knots.

‘Request crosswind component,’ she said to the controller, asking him to check the charts in the tower and advise her how strong the wind from the side would be as she tried to land.

‘From two zero, gusting to four zero knots from your left on approach and I say again, caution wind shear on short final,’ the controller responded.

Oh great, Katherine thought to herself, a forty knot crosswind! Perfect.

‘Crosswind limit is twenty knots for the Caravan, confirm?’ she asked André, who did not reply. She momentarily glanced up to check on him. He was nodding to himself and staring at his instruments.

He’s lost it, she realised, just as she emerged from the clouds and saw the runway ahead of her through the rain, slightly to the right. She was lined up well enough to go for an approach and went through the pre-landing checks by herself.

She called final approach and requested another wind check which confirmed the previous report. She aimed for a third of the way down the runway, monitoring the four precision approach path indicator lights on the sides. Two white and two red lights indicated that she was on the correct glide slope. She had to fight the winds all the way down and compensate for the left to right force with a startling amount of left bank but it was looking okay for a safe landing. Just as she crossed the threshold and started to come back on the power at about fifty feet, she struck the wind shear.

The crosswind disappeared almost instantly, the ‘Van veered off to the left and they dropped out of the sky. Katherine battled to level the aircraft with her right hand as she pushed the power lever rapidly forward with her left.

‘Going around!’ she called out loudly, aborting the landing and aware, out of the corner of her eye, that André was nodding slowly.

The wheels just cleared the runway edge lights as she took power and flew past the tower, accelerating and then gaining height. At three hundred feet she came back slightly on the throttle and settled into a normal climb, initiating the missed approach procedure which would send her back to the radio beacon to begin the approach again. She glanced at the weather radar which showed thunderstorms all around the airfield. They covered her path ahead, the approach path behind her, and her route back to it. The ‘Van bucked and weaved in the turbulence but when she engaged the autopilot it stayed in, allowing her to relax for a moment as the aircraft climbed.

She advised the tower that she was making a missed approach and going around to come in again. Then she reviewed her situation. She had about thirty minutes of fuel left. The wing lights revealed that the frost had melted off the wings and there was no sign of glazed ice, but the outside temperature gauge showed that if she continued to climb into cooler air—as the full procedure required—they would be right in the danger range. Watching the weather radar for a few seconds she realised that the storms were intensifying rather than dissipating as she had hoped. She looked at André who was now staring out of his side window lost in confused thought, and made her decision. Rather than climb up into the clouds again and risk icing she would make a visual circling approach. She advised the tower of her intention. The controller confirmed that she was the only aircraft attempting to land at that time, and reminded her once more of the wind shear condition.

Lowering the nose and reducing power to remain below the clouds at about eight hundred feet she turned back towards the field, carefully keeping the runway lights in view as she went through her checks once more. Completing the tight circuit she again lined up on final approach and followed exactly the same procedure as before. On short final the tower advised her of a slight increase in the crosswind component. She tightened her grip on the control column. Crossing the threshold she reached for the power lever again but this time did not begin to