It's always fun to fly in Iraq. There are always surprises, twists and turns. Nothing ever goes to plan - particularly when you're flying Iraqi (sc)Airways.
To start, there is no flight time. They will tell you a time to shut you up, sometimes (in the north it's always 8am, until you arrive at 6am at the airport for your flight to find out it's been changed to 3pm) but on a whole you're in the dark. Secondly, you may have ticket, you may have a reservation, you may have even paid the 100,000 IDs (approx 85USD), but that doesn't mean that you're on the name list (which in some cases doesn't emerge until 15mins prior to boarding). Finally, you may have paid, you may be on the list, you may be in the departure lounge (heck you may be flying in the plane) but that does not guarantee you will end up at your intended destination. No, no. Whilst flying in Iraq, you can never be certain that you have arrived until your feet touch the ground. Essentially, unless the sun, the moon and the stars are perfectly aligned, there is no way in hell you are getting to your destination at the time you intended to. Barriers to this can include dust, rain, VIPs, and your pilot feeling like he didn't want to get out of bed this morning.
This being said, you will always eventually leave. You just have to come prepared. Always bring a book. Always charge your laptop and iPod. Always book and extra night (or two) in a hotel in Sulaimaniyah. I was once stuck in that airport for 3 days, for, actually all of the reasons started above. I finally made it to Baghdad - they got me, my colleagues and the steady growing crowd of stranded travellers down. They had to charter a massive Airbus from "Seagull Airways" (they are slovakian in case you are wondering) to do it - but they got us there.
Yesterday was no different. After being left to ponder what time my PSDs would be banging on my pod in the morning to take me to the airport, I was scurrying around at 7:30 to cram all my stuff into my giant 70L backpack to rush to the airport. We got confirmation that the flight would be leaving at 10 - and it being rushhour in Baghdad (Sunday is the first day of the week here) we needed to get there ASAP (Yalla Yalla Yalla). At 9am we made down through Route Irish into BIAP, with our Airport pick-up (aka Palm Greaser) pacing worried we would not get tickets or on to the plane. He had already "taken care of the ticket guy" (BIAP is run by the GOI (gov't of Iraq) and therefore is the third most corrupt place on earth), but he was still unsure. At about 9:45 we got our tickets, finally, and he got us through the VIP line to check in. Withing 10 mins we were in the departure lounge.
Thinking - Wow - given the urgency in which we got our tickets, maybe we'll actually leave on time today - my colleagues and I joined the line at the usual gate to board the plane up north and I called my staff coming into Erbil to tell them that I would be able to meet this afternoon. We stood there for about 3 mins until the ticket collector walked past saying "Damacus, Damascus, Damascus". Ha ha... who were we kidding. Leaving on time?
2 hours later we board the plane to Sulaimaniyah/Erbil. It's more than half empty (and I'm angry because given our numbers, we could have taken their smaller, newer, cleaner Bombardiers that are less likely to fall out of the sky - Inshallah). I'm still going to make it up north to meet my staff, but not for as long as I would like (given we have MASSIVE youth conference we're running this week - and I have been stuck in the IZ for the last month).
And... ohhhh... it's a holiday today... another one (Happy Birthday Prophet Mohammad) - that's what... the 3rd one this month and we still have Kurdish new years to go? (it's March 9th)
(Iraqis work about 85 days a year... but that is a subject of another post)
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