Downwind Left


Downwind left

 

We left Jersey early Thursday morning, just a few days before Christmas with just the owner in the back of the Cessna 421, but as the trip was not the run of the mill trip for me, Mike one of the club instructors came along with me upfront.
First stop was Montpellier to pick up two other passengers then airborne again for Monastir Tunisia.
Looking out my side window I noticed the familiar oil leaking out from the top cooling grill of the port engine. It had been there for several weeks and engineers had looked several times but had been unable to pin down the source.
The long transit of the Mediterranean at FL190 passed quickly and both Mike and I look forward to an evening at the Royal Hotel Monastir. Soon the north African coast came in view ad we started a slow descent. ATC handed us over to the local Tunis approach control for control passing Tunis and onward to Monastir, not that their instructions made much sense as the English were at best basic.
As we passed the north African coast visibility started to reduce in haze however the weather for both Tunis and Monastir remained reasonable giving light winds and visibility of 5000m. ATC then gave us some sort of instruction, not that clear, but clearly for us Cessna  G-TONI, both of us thought they had given a warning about military traffic and to proceed downwind left for runway 29 at Tunis, we acknowledged, but then received another call from ATC that neither of us understood.
Mike gave two calls to Tunis approach control reminding them that our destination was Monastir, just as he was doing this, I spotted just above us and ahead to our left, an aircraft, it looked like a military two-seat fighter.

 

It held its position and distance for a minute or so but slowly closed in closer to us, so close that we both saw the two pilots, the aircraft was rocking its wings and the pilots indicating for us to go down.
Mike said, I think they want us to descend and follow them, he was right and considering it looked armed with underwing rockets we both agreed we should. Things became hectic now as the passengers in the back became alarmed demanding we do what that jet wanted, and whilst also trying to communicate with Tunis approach, without success, trying to outline our intentions.
We continued to descend now down to about 3000ft, still with the military jet just ahead of us, at this point I saw below us a large two-runway airfield, that must be Tunis Carthage, the jet we were following was taking us downwind left for runway 29.  All this time, but without any luck, Mike was trying constantly to make sense of what ATC was saying, however, we both clearly understood that whatever Tunis approach was saying, we had to follow that military jets instructions and land.
It’s at times like this that you tend to revert to basic flying, so I just lowered the gear and flap and without any delay curved the 421 to line up on short final to runway 29, losing sight of the jet. We had no ATC landing clearance, well none that we understood anyway, but we were going to land whatever.

About a mile out from landing one of the passengers came forward, leaned into the cockpit and with an ashen face pointed to the left engine. I didn’t believe it, we had a trail of smoke behind us from the port engine, clearly, we had a port engine fire. Now we had an ATC call that we understood, Cessna on finals you have an engine on fire, we shut down the engine and fired the extinguisher on the port side. Within seconds we had landed and I turned left off the runway and stopped.
We all evacuated without any delay just as the Tunis fire vehicles surrounded the aircraft and sprayed foam over the port engine, closely followed by several police and military cars. Our welcome to Tunisia wasn’t very welcoming and we all were taken to interrogation rooms.
We waited until an English speaking official arrived and they wanted to know why we had landed at Tunis Carthage International without a flight plan, without ATC landing clearance and not followed Tunis approach control instructions. When we explained that we had been intercepted by a military jet and ordered to land at Tunis, they would not believe us, it was not possible, as no military jet was in the Tunis area.
The Tunis Military Airforce commander on the airfield was called, he spoke reasonable English, and being an aviator was more sympathetic to our story, however when I said what the military jet looked like he became a little pale and started fast talking in Arabic.
He explained that the aircraft we saw was an Aermacchi but these had been disbanded from the Tunisian air force 10 years earlier, and they now flew the Northrop T5.
All of us in the room then realised the implications, it was just before Christmas, we had been guided into Tunis by an old military jet that the authorities and ATC had no knowledge of, we then had an engine fire on short finals, had that Jet not guided us into Tunis then the outcome for us may well have been extreme. 
They let us go, and we all arrived back at our various homes on Christmas eve, the fire in the engine  turned out to have been caused by a leaking oil cooler seal spraying oil onto the exhaust, the oil weep on the cooling grill had been a symptom that no one had picked up.
I was never keen on flying over Christmas after that.








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