Spiraling into Baghdad

For anyone I have left hanging….I did in fact make it to Iraq as planned. J and I really thought we wouldn’t end up going and procrastinated on packing our bags accordingly. However, we eventually made our way to the airport on Monday morning after it took an hour (!) to check out of the HoJo. J had been staying there for over a month, and her bill ended up being at least four pages long.

After arriving at the airport, we found out that Air Serv was in fact, open for business and flights were leaving as scheduled. This information brought mixed emotions for both J and I because while I was excited to finally be going in, you really don’t want to be the first flight to depart after being shut down for days due to a SPECIFIC threat against civilian aircraft. No one else seemed too concerned though, so we just went with it. This was my first time flying Air Serv, which is a company that receives funding from USAID and usually runs humanitarian flights in and out of disaster zones. For example, I as a humanitarian aid worker take precedence over someone flying in who works for Bechtel or Halliburton. This is probably the only instance where that would be the case, so I guess I’ll have to take whatever special privileges I can get!

I had heard a lot about this particular Air Serv route, due to the nausea-inducing spiral landing the pilots have to make when flying into Baghdad. While I usually love fast rides and welcome death-defying activities in the air, I can’t say that the laminated information in the back of the airplane seat made me feel too thrilled about what lay ahead:

“For those of you have not traveled with us before, you need to be aware that for your security and safety, and not for your comfort, we do a spiral descent into Baghdad.

This is carried out to avoid any risk from anti-aircraft missiles or small arms fire and is 100% effective in achieving this objective.

We start the spiral from 15,000 feet overhead the airfield and the aircraft is banked at an average angle of bank of 45 degrees.

The rate of descent will be about 4,000 per minute and there may be some discomfort to the ears as the cabin pressurization controller has difficulty keeping up with the rate of descent. For first time travelers to Baghdad, the procedure can seem quite alarming, but is a totally safe and an entirely normal procedure.

Enjoy your flight with Air Serv!”

Right. Nothing like hurtling towards the ground at 4,000 feet per minute.

Actually, in all fairness, the whole experience was far better than I expected it to be. I think the main advantage is that it was only a 14-seater plane and the pilots were in full view of the passengers. Neither of them showed any sign of panic, so it made me feel a lot better. Also, the spiral downward afforded an excellent view of what was on the ground, and I saw two of Saddam’s palaces out of the window while we were circling around.

While the flight ended up being relatively painless, I can’t say the same for the immigration experience at the Baghdad airport. Based upon information J and I received from the Iraqi Embassy in Amman, neither of us had visas for Iraq (apparently NOT required if your country’s forces in Iraq total more than 500 troops. Needless to say, I wasn’t in doubt that I qualified). After walking into the arrivals hall, the immigration officer came up to our Air-Serv contingent and asked about visas. Unfortunately, he asked J and me first, and our negative response drew a look of intense irritation. We pulled out every Mercy Corps document we had that proved we were registered with various ministries in Iraq, as well as our ID cards and letters of employment. At first he was adamant that unless we had visas, we weren’t getting in. An Iraq-based woman working for Air-Serv started yelling at the guy telling him that we were legitimately there and that he was only causing difficulties for us because he wanted to show off. An angry exchange ensued between the two, and the woman was eventually reprimanded by her boss for yelling at the immigration official. Our immigration guy said he would take our documents to his boss who would make the final decision about our status. Meanwhile, all the other passengers on our plane went through the visa line without incident.

J and I continued to stand on the wrong side of the immigration desks for at least 15 minutes while the “decision” was being made, which was irritating because I knew they would let us in eventually. And sure enough – our immigration guy comes back, apologizes for the delay and sends us through to get our passports stamped.

I was feeling that the whole immigration “exercise” was somewhat understandable up until the point I found out that two other Americans (men) without visas sailed right on through immigration. Welcome to Iraq.

From Baghdad, we got back on the plane, spiraled back up and flew on to Erbil in northern Iraq, where we spiraled again back down to land. I really feel like an old hand at spiraling now. In Erbil, a Mercy Corps driver met us and drove us three hours down to Sulamaniyah, where I am going to be staying for at least a week, possibly a lot longer. The landscape of this area is actually quite pretty, and I’m posting some pictures from the drive. The hotel (five stars – according to the proprietors!) leaves a bit to be desired, but it’s serviceable. I just try not to think about the fact that the carpet has probably never been vacuumed and clearly someone else had slept in the bed before I arrived. Also, the buffet breakfast is really just bread, processed cheese (Laughing Cow of all things!) and hard-boiled eggs. At least it makes deciding what to eat really easy...