The Longest Day

In the Air Force, the best-made plans can change as quickly as a shift change in our command post, so our short overnight stay in New Mexico changed into 40-hours thanks to a missing overflight clearance of one of our neighbors south of Mexico. I woke up about 6 hours prior to our expected alert, around 9 am local time. Our alert was delayed two hours, until 5 pm, and our overflight clearance was still pending. However, I was assured that our clearance would be granted prior to our takeoff.

We finally received the clearance, but a minor maintenance problem delayed our takeoff by 90 minutes. We knew we had a long day ahead; it would be 20 hours long without any delays and we had just lost an hour and a half. Once we hit 24 hours, we would have to be on the ground somewhere.

It was night when we took off and headed southeast, passing into Texas just west of Midland. The city lights along the I-35 corridor were clearly visible ahead; we could see every city from Fort Worth to San Antonio, but a layer of clouds obscured everything south and east of San Antonio. All that was visible of Houston was a dim glow from under the heavy clouds blanketing the city. Soon we left Texas behind and headed south over the gulf.

Houston Center handed us off to Merida (Mexico) Control and the lights of Cancun and Cozumel beckoned to the west. If we had had an in-flight emergency, we could have been sipping margaritas on the beach shortly thereafter. But we continued south, along the Caribbean coast of Central America, crossing over Costa Rica into the Pacific. When the sun rose several hours later, the peaks of the Andes rose above the solid cloud deck to the east.

Nearly eight hours after we took off, we descended and landed in Lima, Peru, where it was around 8 am local time. I was amazed at the uncanny resemblance of the Peruvian capitol to Kabul, Afghanistan; between the mountains, the haze, and the same shade of brown coloring the buildings, the two cities could have been separated at birth. There was a major difference, however; nobody in Lima was actively trying to kill us during our arrival. We quickly offloaded our cargo and prepared to depart for our next stop.

Minor language difficulties arose as we tried to obtain our departure clearance. It took some time to straighten things out, and we lost a little more time. Two hours later we descended into Ecuador’s largest city, Guayaquil, a dense metropolis sprawling across the jungle and hills along the Guayaquil River. The city has close ties to my hometown; Houston is one of the Ecuadorian city’s sister cities. As if inspired by the glittering opulence of Houston, the largest city in Ecuador boasts numerous modern skyscrapers and freeways packed with cars. Our stop in Ecuador was merely a fuel stop and we planned to continue back to New Mexico for the night.

It was a weekend in Guayaquil, so they only had one fuel truck driver. Each truck carried about 20,000 lbs. of fuel and we needed nearly 100,000 lbs. Even if we had been the only aircraft on the ground, it would have taken quite some time to refuel, but there was another C-17 ahead of us, and several more landing behind us. We soon realized that we would not be refueled in time to make it back to New Mexico before the end of our 24 hour crew duty day. Our clock was striking midnight and we would soon turn into a pumpkin.

I used the Sat phone to arrange for other destinations; we would be unable to stay in Guayaquil with more C-17s scheduled to arrive later in the day. Perhaps we could make San Antonio, Corpus Christi, or Houston. But as the fuel trickled onto our plane as if through a soda straw, those options were quickly becoming limited as well. We started looking at Cancun; maybe we’d still enjoy those margaritas on the beach. Our command post wasn’t keen on Cancun, much less Houston. They suggested Key West; a quick look at our computer and existing fuel load showed it was possible. So I opted to take the fuel we had and we took off.

I had now been awake for well over 24 hours, so I passed my instructions to my co-pilots and I hit the bunk for a nap. It seemed like minutes later that I was awakened; we were being told that Key West did not have room on their ramp for our arrival, so once again we started looking all along the Gulf Coast for other options. We could still make Houston, but were informed that Customs would be unavailable at Ellington Field at our planned arrival time. The command post suggested NAS New Orleans, but it would be a three-hour wait for Customs at the Naval Air Station. So we asked about Louis Armstrong International.

After a few phone calls, the command post agreed and arranged for our arrival in New Orleans. After checking in with Houston Center, we coordinated our in-flight divert to the Big Easy. Soon the city appeared from the darkness and we were vectored to a landing on runway 01. A check of the time as we shut down the engines revealed a 24-hour and 7 minute long day. Our longest day was over.