TO TEACH AN OLD BIRD NEW TRICKS … BY LT KRIS HAWBAKER AND LT BRANDON PIERCE
s on every other evening, a muddy shroud engulfed Djibouti City – a sinister combination of the last rays of sunlight illuminating every bit of airborne African dust. Looking down from an aircraft, it looked like fog, and this period of thermal crossover wreaked havoc on the eyes. Mountainous terrain, albeit several miles distant, rose silently out of the layer to the South and West. The city’s lights, usually a welcome guide for any aviator, waited for the sun to fully set before they would reluctantly appear. Into this quagmire we descended in our P-3C Orion, returning home after another long day in the AFRICOM area of responsibility (AOR). Ten hours prior, as the sun had risen, we had rotated away from this very airfield, out to conduct tasking in support of our Horn of Africa mission set. While the mission had been a success, the long flight took its toll on the aircrew, and now all eleven souls on board were looking forward to a post flight visit to the mess hall. However, the terminal phase of flight at Djibouti International Airport (HDAM), rather than serving as a feel-good welcome mat, often posed the greatest threat to P-3 aircrews during our missions. Although it is a NAVAID-equipped ICAO airfield, HDAM is without radar services. Its controllers must base their air picture entirely upon what aircraft pass to them, and there are a large number of dissimilar aircraft and UAVs operating in close proximity. The language barrier of the native controllers is an everpresent challenge, and it’s always an all-hands-on28
deck communications evolution throughout the entire approach and landing. We listened intently to the radios, trying to decipher both ATC directions and other aircraft’s position reports. Nothing seemed amiss until we made the procedure turn inbound on the VOR approach, at which point we overheard ATC giving approach clearance instructions to a quickly incoming civilian airliner. The immediate cause for concern was that they were cleared to intercept the final approach course for the same approach that we were on… at the same altitude. The air traffic control tower had, in effect, forgotten about us. As we were mid-turn, we had neither the aft radar coverage nor any visual contact with the rapidly gaining and descending airliner. On earlier deployments, only rapt attention to radios and a prompt query of ATC could have saved our aircraft from a midair collision with that airliner, whose pilot was almost certainly on Approach
