China Airborne Read Online Free Page B

were in principle a military secret in China—but the controllers hadn’t told us to climb, and we couldn’t get their attention to pass along our increasingly urgent request.
    On the GPS-based moving map in the cockpit, we saw the ridge draw closer. We couldn’t legally turn around, since that would be deviating from our clearance. Nor—again without breaking rules—could we decide to climb on our own. If we kept on straight and level, within ten minutes we’d crash. Then within eight minutes. Then six. Of course, we wouldn’t just keep on flying straight into the mountains. Around the world, pilots always have the option to “declare an emergency” and deviate from their assigned course and do whatever else they must to avoid disaster. But that is asking for trouble, even in places where flight is less carefully restricted than it is in China. I learned later that a military jet was trailing us through the flight. What might it have done if we suddenly made an unauthorized move? I was preparing a pitch to Claeys on the lines of: I know that as foreigners we are “supposed” to be speaking English to the controller, but you can speak perfectly good Chinese! Time to switch? Please?
    All the chatter between pilots and controllers, anywhere in the world, is over open radio channels, as with truckers’ old CBs. The other pilots on the frequency, apparently all of them from airlines, could hear our increasingly tense-sounding attempts to get the controllers’ attention. Finally a Japan Airlines pilot who was capable in both English and Chinese (apart, I assume, from Japanese) broke in to ask us, in English, if we would like some help. He then relayed the request, in Chinese, to the controller.Immediately the controller responded to him—partly because of the language but much more, I suspect, because talking with airline pilots seemed “normal”; we could well have been the first private pilots ever to come through his sector. The JAL pilot passed the word back to us, though we had heard it over the airwaves too. Permission to climb. One hurdle cleared.
    On through the dark and clouds toward Zhuhai. Its airport is one of a large number studding the bay around Hong Kong harbor. Geographically, the closest U.S. equivalent would be the coast of Maine or Alaska, with rocky cliffs rising sharply from the bay. Economically and commercially, the equivalent would be the greater Los Angeles basin, with roads, lights, and buildings sprawling as far in all directions as one could see. As we descended (with controllers’ permission—they were more comfortable in English here so much closer to Hong Kong) in preparation for landing, we were mainly out of the clouds while still 2,000 feet above the ground. We marveled at the lights of the industrial urban expanse while noting the large, unlit masses that signified mountains and rocky islands. Zhuhai’s airport is on the far southern extension of a peninsula, the southernmost point in the Hong Kong area. The instrument approach required circling the hills and island peaks, which is safe enough as long as you can follow the radio-guidance beam all the way down to the airport.
    As we came to the coast, the clouds thickened again, and we found ourselves in the middle of them when only 1,000 feet above the ground. Claeys had his eyes glued to the dials that showed how closely we were following the beam. If we drifted “one dot left” relative to the beam, he would nudge the plane toward the right; if we fell “one dot low” beneath the desired glide path, he would edge the plane up. I looked back and forth from those gauges to the window, waiting for the glimpse ofthe ground or the airport approach lights that we needed before we reached our “decision height” a few hundred feet above the runway.
    Suddenly the beam we were following, for an Instrument Landing System approach (or ILS, the most accurate system then in common use) seemed to behave strangely, and even flicker