A Guatemalan pilot with guts made of steel flew a narco jet right out of the jungle.
DAILY CALLER: According to BreakingBelizeNews.com, Guatemalan military officials “discovered a narco-jet, two vehicles that transported the drugs and firearms” in the area of Peten back at the end of January. Among the vehicles were several packages of coke an AK-47. That’s all pretty standard. However, what’s not standard is having to deal with the jet.
Pretty dirty environment for what our military likes to refer to as “Rotational Anti Friction Devices”. A ball or needle bearing to you and I.
Wait a minute – what about the guy who LANDED it??
Big huge balls!
No doubt a tough job, but I can absolutely tell you that I’ve been a passenger on a float plane a few times with less margin for error. That jet had plenty of runway left. When you run out of river and all there is are trees and hills you can get pretty nervous about whether or not you’re having dinner that night. Pilots have a tough job, their passengers can have it pretty tough too.
Big Mike setta balls or he spent too much time sniffing around the cabin before deciding to go for it.
Anybody fly out of St. Thomas Charlotte Amalie airport in the 70s or before in a full size Boeing? One could actually see individual fronds on the tops of palms, with the water 15 seconds away. Short, short , short runway. Happy for the rum before boarding.
I guess I must be confused or stupid or something. The Daily Caller video was not of the jet in the photo at Breaking Belize News.
What movie was that video from? Mediocre cinematography, decent but not great editing, but dragging the camera through the trees was a nice simple gimmick. Plus, that wasn’t a jet, it was a turboprop.
@PJ – Yup. Harry S Truman Airport, St. Thomas USVI. I went in and out of there about five times. I knew people who never did it twice. Quite exciting!
The aircraft in the vid was a Hawker with TFE731 turbofans. I used to work on them at their service center in Little Rock. Built like a brick shithouse but a real PITA.
PJ
Kahului Airport in Maui will leave pinch marks in your seat.
PJ — Got your call! I’ll phone you tomorrow — mid-morning PDT.
I’ve never flown in/out of Charlotte Amalie, but here is the old Hong Kong airport (Kai Tak). Exactly as I remember it! As low as these planes look to be (they are LOW), the ride was enhanced by it being a night landing. We could see the office workers and condo dwellers in their places plain as day. I’m usually never alarmed by anything while flying, but the caution grid on the hillside got my attention. Fun times.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NiPyrfEuOeo
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AA, I will be here, possibly snowed in. Lake effect snow hits us. Depends if it will continue through the night.
Yep, those are seriously tight take-offs and landings.
looks like he had plenty of runway Trees blocked any cross wind. bet the blades in the engines were sand blasted and the bearing and bushings had issues the next overhaul not as bad as operating a C-17 in the sand box except they are designed for that type of environment
Bad Brad, you have a wonderful way with hysterically funny descriptive words. Love it.
BB — Yeah, Kahului is great fun! I like those kinds of landings, actually. 5 hours of an airplane going in a straight line over an ocean is a little monotonous.
PJ
Freaken worse cross winds I’ve ever seen. And I’m a coward when it comes to flying.
Praying for you nightly. I know you’re still kicking ass.
Uncle Al
PJ – oops, I hit the send button rather then the J
Uncle Al, were you there before they modernized. I loved the old totally open airport then. It had the flavor of the old movies. Loved climbing the stairs up to the airplane in the great outdoors.
We were there about 5 times also. Luckily we didn’t have to even deal with O’Hare for most of the trips because we could catch flights out of Midway to Miami or PR, then connect to St. Thomas, then ferry to St. John. I keep a blow-up pic of Trunk Bay on my fridge. Loved playing chicken with the waves and the coral that juts out in the bay.
Once I got the brilliant idea that I wanted to snorkle across a small channel off St. John to what the locals called Turtle Island. Extremely secluded at the time, off a trail. DH cannot snorkel, he sinks like a rock. No body fat. So our then 13 year old son who didn’t want me to solo it, went with while DH sat on the shallow beach. About 1/4 the way out, I realized our son was uncomfortable with the excursion and having snorkel problems. I lost my steam, and we headed back to shore. I think my angel was tapping me on the shoulder telling me to get real.
Ah, memories of the fun times there. Sorry I went on so.
Brad, me for you also. Thanks.
Still can’t figure out why also in my femur besides the other areas. ???
Although I’ve been subjected numerous radiation and radioactive tests throughout the decades.
Hey, when I was a kid, the shoe store had an X-ray machine that my sister and I played with. I think it was a Buster Brown thing. The salesman convinced our parents that we had grow room in the shoes by us sticking our shoed feet under the x-ray machine and we wiggled our toes, caught pretty clear sight of our feet bones, etc. We entertained ourselves with it while our siblings were getting fit for new shoes.
Night night all. God bless you and yours and our VSGPDJT and his crew.
PJ
Yea, Femur make no sense. But neither does cancer. My mother use to jokingly tell me when I was young and facing challenges that God would give you the challenges if he didn’t think you could handle it. It was a joke back then. Not so much now. I finally start glowing on the 24th.
@PJ – My geographically dispersed family¹ would get together for a vacation in August most years from the early 70s to early 80s, and we’d always rent the same house (Rock Beauty) on Devers Bay on St. John. We’d snorkel in the morning, come back to the house for lunch (sometimes lobster or grouper we *cough* found) and then back in the water later in the afternoon. We’d occasionally go over to the North side of the island but there was so much spectacular reef / coral / fish right at our own spot we’d usually stay close to home. Sometimes we’d swim around to Hart Bay to the East, and frequently the other way to Chocolate Hole (less scenic, but more lobster and grouper there).
You get three points for taking a stab at getting to Turtle Island, and SIX points for knowing when to head back to shore!
Yes, this was pre-modernization at the Truman Airport. They renamed it in about 1983? and later did the remodeling. I’ll always remember it – fondly! – as Truman.
1. My parents were in Florida, my sister and her family were in Rio and later Lisbon, and I was in DC.
BB, am thinking you always glow in a good way, but not from radioactivity. 🙂
Uncle Al,
Renting a house or villa on St. John for the whole clan was always my dream. I wanted to do that with a small, perfectly sized inheritance, but itdidn’t happen.
p.s. My favorite thing was chasing schools of small fish off various beaches around the island.
I can’t scuba worth a darn. I hyperventilated the first time I tried. DH loves it,
Try landing sideways on a snow/ice covered runway with 50 mph cross winds sometime. The second all three wheels touched down, the wind caught the tail and we turned 90 degrees and I was looking straight down the runway from the seat over the right wing. My only thought was “so this is how I’m going to die”. I shit you not.
This is PJ
Mickey, oh shit!
“several packages of coke an AK-47” Baltimore Starter kit?
Fudge man, I’do it for a Mexican coke in a bottle.
Roller coaster runways are always fun.