Today turned out to be another long day with two legs; Khartoum to Aswan flown by Phil and Aswan to Cairo October (the Cairo GA field) flown by me. We left our hotel at around 7:15 am for the airport where our handler was waiting and the various formalities were completed quite quickly so that we were airborne by 0550 UTC for the 550nm flight to Aswan completed in 3hr 45 min. Apart from crossing the Nile on several occasions, our flight was over generally featureless desert in CAVOK conditions.
We crossed into Egyptian airspace just south of Abu Simbel.
Aswan picked us up on radar around 100nm out and we were vectored for an ILS approach on to runway 36. Efficient handling and refuelling enabled us to turn round for the next leg in around 75 minutes.
The second leg was around 400nm continuing north and often nearby the Nile and the fertile green strips of land on each side completed in 2hr 55min.
We were picked up by Cairo radar around 80nm out and vectored for a visual approach to 01 at October. There the faffing began. Despite having cleared inbound at Aswan, our passports were taken away and for a long time, nothing happened. Eventually Eddie Gould of G A S E who is looking after us here explained that officialdom could not understand why we should want to visit Cairo on a Friday. Eventually all was well and a retired Egyptian Air Force general kindly allowed us to put Juliet Bravo in his hangar. Then we had what can only be described as an interesting (with a capital ‘I’) two hour plus drive into Cairo – not for the faint hearted! Tomorrow we hope to see something of the Pyramids before continuing our journey back into Europe on Saturday.