Cited in ‘Faith on the Frontline’
‘Mayday Mayday Mayday, this is ISAF 30 GB Mayday. Our malfunction has grown worse, and we may have to shut down all four engines in the next 5 minutes.’
I am not quite sad enough to rate my favourite radio calls but that was one that I will still be telling my grand-kids and great-grand-kids about until the day I die. It was one of the busiest pieces of airspace in the world, where they don’t even wait for you to taxi off before they clear someone to land behind you, yet no-one said a single word for about 45 seconds!
We were coming out of Kandahar airbase, Afghanistan, in the early afternoon and it was hot. Really hot. Shortly after take-off the captain noticed our number two and three engines were overheating and, going through the drill, we realised that we may have to shut them down. At that altitude and temperature, the remaining engines didn’t even give us enough performance to turn back towards the airfield and our options were to keep the engines running until they caught fire or to crash land in the Red Desert away from known Taliban-held areas. In reality though we knew that to crash straight ahead into 100-foot-tall sand dunes would mean almost certain death. So, without hesitation the captain pulled the aircraft round back towards the airfield whilst we still had all four engines, thus risking multiple engine fires for the sake of getting to the safety of the ISAF-controlled base area. The extra strain resulting from the turn and increase in speed subsequently overheated engines one and four and we found ourselves in pretty much the worst position you would ever want to be in, in a four-engined tube in the sky.
After I put out my Mayday call though, both to God and Air Traffic Control, things quickly looked a lot better. The weapons range between us and the runway was immediately closed, and we were cleared to land on the downwind runway. With only a few hundred feet till touchdown, warnings started blaring telling us we had to shut down engines two and three … if we had waited any longer to decide to make that 180-degree turn to safety, I may well not be here now.
I wonder, are your chugging away quite happily in your life towards the desert? I can tell you it’s not a very nice place to be and crash landing there isn’t a viable option. Make a turn back and put out your Mayday. It’s a risky manoeuvre, your friends and family might not like it but it’s the only way to be truly safe. I can guarantee that because of what Christ has done for you on the cross, you will get vectors for a straight in approach.