Rain pounded on the roof of the hotel on and off throughout the night, disturbing my rest. We were due to be taking off before dawn, and doing so into rain and cloud is never enjoyable; indeed it’s usually best not to fly in such conditions, and so I was worried that we might be looking at a delay. My alarm went off at 0305am and I rolled out of bed and dressed. Leaving the hotel at 0320, the roads were deserted, but before long a surprising number of vehicles had appeared. Things get going early in Samoa. There was light drizzle as we drove, but the weather did seem to be improving in line with the forecast.
Early morning at the airport
Sabu took us through immigration, which was already open for a departing Fiji Airways flight, and then we headed to customs. Things here were rather less active and we had to hammer on the door of the arrivals section for a while before a customs officer appeared and took care of the paperwork. Sabu then drove us out to a very wet Planey and I preflighted as Sabu helped out by holding a torch. I called for clearance before starting the engine and, unfortunately, found that the flight plan had not been received. Further inquiries revealed that the computer which receives the plans was in a locked office, and the man with the key had not arrived yet! After a few phone calls and an email to a different address the flight plan was filed and we were given our clearance.
Pre-flighting in Samoa
The Fiji Airways jet zoomed past in front of us as we sat at the hold short line, departing on runway 26. The wind was calm and we were instructed to line up the reciprocal, runway 08. After a moment’s delay while the final flight plan processing went through we were cleared to depart straight ahead, climbing to 1,000ft before turning on course to the northwest. I pushed in the throttle and we lumbered off down the runway to begin our 1,521 mile flight to Kiritimati Island. The “easy” flights were done – we were on to the long ones now.
Departure from Samoa
Dawn breaks on the climb out from Samoa
With the blessing of air traffic control I turned left early; we were climbing slowly, and hills loomed ahead on runway heading. We wallowed our way up to 7,000ft and leveled off there, passing in and out of the cloud tops. Faleolo approach switched us over to the HF radio pretty early, and contact with them was excellent in our radio check. By the time we reached our first waypoint however we couldn’t raise them at all. There were no pre-defined intersections or waypoints along our route, so we had filed the flight plan by defining our own waypoints using latitudes and longitudes.
Dawn, north of Samoa
As we settled into the cruise there was a 15kt headwind; this grew to almost 30kt over the next few hours. We used the Garmin InReach to communicate with my pilot friend Joachim who checked the latest weather reports and responded that there weren’t really any better altitudes. We resolved just to put up with the slow speeds; there weren’t a lot of other options! At our waypoint passing 8 degrees south we managed to make contact with Faleolo over the HF to report our progress, and they passed us over to San Francisco Radio. We were unable to manage any contact with them so cruised along our way, trying to raise them every now and then, eventually managing to talk to them and report that all was normal. It was amazing to me that we were in radio contact with San Francisco, even if it was probably via a closer base station, from our little cockpit over the South Pacific.
Calm weather over the Pacific
Thirty minutes later we heard from Joachim again; wind speeds looked better down at 2,000ft. I was dubious that this would help us, given the poorer efficiency we’d get from flying in the thicker air down there, but we decided to try it out anyway. As suspected, it was no good; the headwind was 10kts lower, but our true airspeed was also 10kts lower and we were burning more fuel. We did see a boat, at least, before climbing back up to 8,000ft.
Monitoring the HF we overheard San Francisco Radio talking with a coastguard aircraft in the vicinity of Tahiti. The aircraft reported that they had located a shipwreck survivor in the water and were commencing a rescue. This was reassuring – even if we went down out here, rescue was not impossible!
Radio contact with San Francisco became a bit more reliable as we went on, although HF quality seems to be more affected by atmospheric conditions than it is by distance. As we drew closer to Kiritimati, San Francisco called us up to relay a message. Apparently Kiritimati were asking if we’d need fuel. I responded and made it quite clear that fuel had been pre-paid months ago and that we’d been contacting them repeatedly over the past few weeks to try and get some confirmation that they were ready. We could hear San Francisco relaying this message to Kiritimati by HF, although couldn’t hear the replies.
Our flight route
Just south of Kiritimati we passed another major milestone; the equator. Juvy had been with me nearly four years earlier when we passed it the other way over Indonesia, and it was nice to celebrate together once again. Soon afterwards we established VHF contact with Kiritimati and reported as much to San Francisco. They cleared us to descend at our own discretion down to 5,500ft, with a subsequent cruise clearance from 5,500ft. This basically means that you can descend as you wish, but can’t climb back up.
Crossing the equator northbound
The island came into view under the cloud as we descended. The terrain was quite unusual; the island is very low lying and mostly made up of coral rises and shallow lagoons tied together by palms and other vegetation. Part of the island nation of Kiribati, Kiritimati is not a place which most of the world would ever hear about; indeed, I don’t think I’d heard of it until I developed an interest in world flights. The island has a population of about 7,500 people and severely limited infrastructure. This had meant that Kiritimati had been by far the last place to open its borders in the wake of the COVID pandemic.
Coasting in over Kiritimati
Kiritimati
Kiritimati lagoons
Kiritimati lagoons
The control tower cleared us to land straight in, and to taxi in to the terminal apron. We parked up in the corner and shut down, having closed our flight plan with San Francisco over the HF on the ground. There was only one man around, from customs; still no word from K-Oil, the fuelers, or from the lodge about collecting us. However, within the next few minutes everybody turned up! Immigration arrived to check us into the country, the hotel owner showed up to give us a ride back, and two men from K-Oil even arrived in a truck with two barrels of avgas in the back. It’s rare, but sometimes things just work out better than expected.
Preparing to refuel on Kiritimati
Refueling at Kiritimati
Refueling was efficient, if not quick, and we filled all four wing tanks before putting the remainder into the ferry tank in the cabin. The pump leaked quite badly but the fuelers had a clean stainless steel bucket which they used to catch the leaking fuel, allowing us to put it into the tanks instead of wasting it. My filter funnel came in handy here both for making this process easier, and for giving us an extra level of confidence that the fuel was uncontaminated.
Welcome to Kiritimati
Kiritimati airport
Kiritimati airport apron
The sun was setting as we rode in the back of the “Lagoon View” fishing lodge’s Toyota and headed for the lodge. Dinner was being served as we arrived; tuna, rice and vegetables. We met the other guests; four American fishermen who had booked their trip before COVID and been waiting ever since, an American yachtsman who’d flown in to see if it was a good destination to sail to (and had decided “no”), and three American Christian missionaries.The food, like the rooms, was simple but satisfactory. We turned in early, ready for a couple of days of rest before striking out north once again. The only downside was a lack of hot water but given the regular water shortages on the island, we were happy to be able to shower at all!
My room on Kiritimati