As a general rule, it is better if pilots don’t get lost.

As a general rule, it is better if pilots don’t get lost.

For a start, it’s not that easy to pull over, crank down the window and ask for directions. Secondly, last time I looked there weren’t petrol pumps in the sky so extra miles isn’t always a good thing. And finally, its generally more relaxing for passengers to get where they wanted to go in the first place.

If however, you find yourself in the situation that I was in, 5,000 feet up in the air in a tiny Cessna, 70 minutes into a 15 minute flight and with a pilot, who if I’m honest I don’t think had lost the plot because he’d never had it in the first place, then it’s time to take decisive action.

‘Victor’ said I, ‘you appear to be somewhat lost. Shall I have a go at the directions?’

Although I was sat in the co-pilot seat it was more of a ‘free-seat’ than ‘skills’ placement and I have about as many flying skills as a vervet monkey – possibly fewer. But, given that I should have been tucking into a delicious lunch on the shady banks of the Luangwa River by now, and not still careering around the skies in a hot baked bean tin with a propeller I’d had enough.

The day had started out well. I’d hopped across the hot tarmac of Mfuwe Airport, Zambia and into the battered leather front seat of the Cessna that was to take me to Tafika Camp’s little grass runway 15 minutes due northeast. I’d introduced myself to the pilot, ‘I’m Victor’ he replied, ‘ready for the off?’ And, pulling the door shut, his Ray-Bans on and both of us our headphones we took to the skies.  

‘Perfect’, I thought. ‘A quick flight where I can sit and alternate between looking at all those exciting dials in front of me and the sprawling wilderness of the South Luangwa National Park down below’.

However, within seven minutes of take-off, and despite the cool air flowing into the cabin Victor started  sweating profusely. Not only was sweat dripping down his face like the Victoria Falls on a rainy day but he had started tapping his satnav both nervously and repeatedly. Tap, sweat, tap tap, sweat, mop brow, tap some more. Sweat.  Eventually he spoke. ‘Heth, can you see a camp down there?’ 

‘No’ I replied, ‘we’re no longer over the park, you do know that don’t you?’ Peering down it was easy to spot woodsmoke curling out of thatched huts - a sure sign we were firmly outside the park boundary and in the community land surrounding it.

‘What?’ He tapped his satnav again. Sweated a bit more. Then, banking all the way round to the right he ‘felt it was probably best we returned to Mfuwe Airstrip’ and ‘had another go’.  

Well. Thus ensued 70 minutes of flying backwards and forwards between Mfuwe Airstrip and a dozen random villages Victor found by heading out of it at a number of insane angles, none of them correct. As I felt by this stage my good humour and fuel gauge were only heading in one direction I suggested to Sweating Victor (as I had now named him), ‘why don’t we fly straight across to the river, follow it upstream until we see the camp and then land?’

Well Hey Presto! After following this simple Bronze Duke of Edinburgh method, precisely fifteen minutes after leaving Mfuwe we were bouncing down Tafika’s airstrip (landing not his strength either – unless you like travelling in the pouch of a kangaroo) to an extremely relieved camp manager who was about to scramble his microlight to look for our wreckage.  

As I unpeeled my back from the leather seat I thought I’d just dig a tiny bit deeper into my esteemed pilot’s credentials. ‘Victor’ said I, ‘you know you said you were in the RAF for nine years, may I ask what you were doing in it? Flying cargo planes? Engineer possibly?’  

‘Oh no Heth’ he said, with a massive sweaty grin. ‘When I was in the RAF I was a chef’.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why chefs like Sweating Victor should not buckle themselves into the cockpit of an aircraft. I know making a souffle is tricky, but it’s not half as bloody complicated as flying a plane.