Do the Khartoum dance...

Hearing: Out of my mind - James Blunt

What a flight! I have to say I enjoyed this one. The people are so colorful and friendly though as most other pax we fly ignorant to their own safety. It was a turnaround and so it was a long day in general but there was a moment in which I couldn't stop laughing.

We landed into Khartoum airport, nothing fancy, very basic, no airbridge and very old aircrafts parked on the tarmac. As we were taxiing towards the terminal I looked out of the window to see a little man doing this funny backwards dance alongside the aircraft. I cracked up laughing! I knew he was directing the pilots to maneuver through the other parked aircrafts for fear of our wing hitting one of them (our aircraft was by far the biggest) but it didn't take away my initial reaction. He was running to keep up and gesturing like crazy, it was like some bizarre game of charades or something. I think I'll always remember that moment, it was so unexpected - it was my first Khartoum flight and it was what kept me going through the long flight.

That and the people. At first I thought they were quite rude, they had this way of getting your attention by snapping their fingers at you but its just their way and after getting used to it I saw they were quite nice. I mean at one stage I was literally shouting at them to sit down cuz we had just landed and they were perfectly fine when they disembarked - all smiles and thankyous and great service compliments. Go figure, cant imagine I would have gotten the same reaction from LHR pax. And they're supposedly more 'sophisticated flyers'.

But in all it was a great flight, a nice change of pace and one of those that make the other 364 days bearable. LOL!

VP