Starting the long trek home - Tony Cunnane's Life and Times

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The flight from Tengah to Gan on Tuesday 11 July was uneventful. To our relief the problem with the alternator did not recur. On arrival, however, we were told that there was a problem with the diplomatic clearance for our landing at Dubai the following day. It seems the UAE had not responded to the request we had submitted before leaving Tengah. I asked the Operations Staff at Gan to try and hasten a response from the UAE. Unfortunately, the only way to communicate with the outside world from Gan was via a teleprinter link back to Singapore.

Since leaving the UK a month earlier I had routinely been sending an information copy of all my signals to the British Army unit at Sharjah that was supposedly looking after RAF interests in the Gulf area. By the scheduled time of our departure on 12 July not a single one of those messages had been answered and so we had to spend an additional day at Gan.

I had a quick conversation that second evening at Gan to an RAF VC-10 captain passing though on a scheduled flight. He advised me, off the record of course, that diplomatic clearances for places like the UAE and Iran often did not arrive until well after the flights had taken place because of all the bureaucracy in those countries. As long as I kept copies of all my signals he reckoned I should depart for Dubai in the morning because diplomatic clearances were rarely, if ever, refused to an aircraft in flight. Accordingly, with my fingers crossed, we left Gan on 13 July and set course for Dubai.

The final approach to Dubai was interesting. In 1972 there were no radio or radar approach aids at Dubai but I had faith in the skill of our two navigators. We were cleared by ATC down to 1,000 above the ground "at captain’s discretion" but the forward visibility was extremely limited in "suspended sand". Eventually a kindly Speedbird (BOAC) pilot came up on the Tower frequency and told us that he would hold off until we found the runway and helpfully added, "Make sure you land at Dubai not Sharjah. It’s been done before! Dubai is the one on the left - the long one!" In those days civilian pilots always enjoyed getting one up on RAF pilots - he knew we were an RAF aircraft because of the international radio call sign we were using.

Our two navigators, Paul Chessal and Ken Hulse, proved to be very accurate and Dubai’s 12,500 ft (3,810m) runway eventually loomed out of the murk dead ahead at a range of about 2 nautical miles. I already had the aircraft in the landing configuration and we had been cleared to land so I lowered full flap, reduced power slightly, and make a slightly steeper than normal straight-in approach to land. On such a long runway there was no need to stream our tail braking parachute. Down at ground level the visibility was better. We were told to turn left at the very end where we would find a ‘Follow Me’ truck waiting to lead us to a dispersal.

After following the truck through a vast, empty, dispersal area we were at last signalled to stop and shut down our engines. When we disembarked we discovered that our aircraft had been surrounded front, sides and rear, by several vehicles, each manned by armed Arab soldiers. An English-speaking Arab came up and asked if we had landed at Dubai by mistake for Sharjah. I assured him that we had permission to land at Dubai and that we were expecting to stay overnight.

To cut a long story short, it quickly became obvious that the Dubai authorities at the airfield had absolutely no knowledge of our flight; they claimed to have seen none of our signals and none of our diplomatic clearance requests. It was clear that ATC had permitted us to land only because they assumed we had some sort of emergency. Now our aircraft and its crew were to be impounded.

Suddenly a British Army Jeep roared up and the driver, I seem to remember he was a staff sergeant, came over. "You were not expected," he said, reprovingly. "We had no prior knowledge of your flight until Dubai ATC called us about an hour ago and told us you were coming in for an unscheduled landing. It’s all very embarrassing because the UAE authorities are very sensitive about their international status and they expect air regulations to be observed to the letter. I've been sent over from Sharjah to try and help. You won't be allowed to leave until it’s all been sorted out."

The Staff Sergeant was clearly only a messenger so I saw no point in trying to explain how I had sent more than a dozen signals to his unit in the previous 14 days or so. He took us into the nearby huge, modern, but virtually deserted airport terminal where he did some bargaining on our behalf. I, as the aircraft captain, was told I would have to pay cash there and then for airport services including, I remember, security and landing fees and a penalty fine for an unauthorised arrival. After a while it was agreed that I could sign chits that would to be charged to Her Britannic Majesty’s Government! The staff sergeant assured me that it would be wise to sign everything and not make a fuss. In any case, we would not be permitted to refuel our aircraft, or depart, until the diplomatic and financial business had been sorted out, so we took his advice and I signed.

At this stage a very helpful Arab, whom I'd seen hovering in the background for several minutes, came over and offered to take us to "the British Airways hotel in the Creek". I accepted that offer and we loaded our overnight kit into his minibus.

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