It's taken me three months but here it finally is, my latest movie flying around the mountains of Papua, Indonesia with the awesome Pilatus PC-6 Turbo Porter.

Enjoy!

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Excellent video!

I had one of my Twin Otters leased to Mimika out of Timika up to about 24 months ago. Now its with Heavylift, but in Burma at the moment. PNG is a great place if you surf, otherwise….

Nice looking Porter BTW.

Nice!

Is there a story behind the hulk in Bilai (4:00)?

Thanks guys! It certainly beats working for a living

dogpilot wrote:I had one of my Twin Otters leased to Mimika out of Timika up to about 24 months ago. Now its with Heavylift, but in Burma at the moment. PNG is a great place if you surf, otherwise….

Small world! Since they lost their Porter in an accident a couple of years back they've been charting us almost daily. I probably do more work for them than I do for the company I work for!

CamTom12 wrote:Is there a story behind the hulk in Bilai (4:00)?

It used to be a Pacific Aerospace P750X-STOL but had a landing mishap about a year ago. It now looks like this: http://indopilot.blogspot.com/2013/04/r ... style.html

So have your run into a character named Ruel Nacachi with Mimika? Interesting Gent.

Thanks for the film, very interesting, the flying, landscape and people, well worth the wait. Not to many places these days where you can sit behind a pilot carrying an axe, and looking nervous at the same time.

Yeah it's a pretty unique place. I'm not too worried about the various weaponry carried by the pax, as axing me in the back of the head won't really do them much good en route!

dogpilot wrote:So have your run into a character named Ruel Nacachi with Mimika? Interesting Gent.

Afraid not. We actually work with a company called "Trans Mimika". Mimika is the name of this region of Papua. I got all excited for a minute thinking you knew the guys here but I guess it would have been with a different company. The only Twin Operators here these days are Trigana, Merpati and Aviastar; perhaps you leased it to one of those guys?

Thanks for sharing. Awesome

Mimika Air was the company with the Porter accident. My aircraft was their last. The operating certificate got sold to Nacachi, who re-named it Asian One. Most of the lads I know are on the other side of the island. My Geologist buddies have all gone down to Australia to work on some gold deposits in the GFA.

Excellent video, I envy your job, even mine is not that bad

How did you get some of your passengers past the TSA?

They ate the TSA inspectors!

Great stuff! Thanks for a glimpse into an amazing part of the world in an amazing bird.

I find your passengers real interesting, and wish you had more footage of them. A takeoff sequence with the cockpit camera turned backwards showing what all is going on behind you would be very cool.

The guy with the axe: tool, weapon, or both? The contrast between your passengers and you is stark, ever think of going native? Pirecing your nose and ear lobes maybe, just to fit in a bit better? They speak English mostly, or at all? They seem to all be in a good mood and having a good time, is that always the case?

I'm planning on making the next movie more about the daily life I lead out here with more focus on what happens after landing at these remote airstrips and before departing again. Something along the lines of "a day in the life..."

They'll use axes/machetes for both weaponry and tools. Bows and arrows for hunting along with air rifles too.

The locals are normally pretty jovial but things can get a little heated when 20 or so all want to get in the aircraft (and they sometimes do manage to squeeze in on top of each other whilst others try to pull them back out to take their place). I normally go for a wander round the village at this point and tell them to decide who gets to fly otherwise no one does.I can squeeze nine seats in there, so that's the maximum I'll take along with a few infants on laps.

No-one speaks English at all but normally one or two can speak Indonesian and translate my rather dodgy Indonesian into their local dialect. Normally involves lots of arms waving.

porterjet wrote:How did you get some of your passengers past the TSA?

I'm a qualified TSA inspector Joking aside if people do bring more serious hardward (AK-47s etc), I'll empty out the breeches myself, keep all the magazines/bullets up front and put them under the seats; you can't actually get them out unless you open the doors thanks to all the seating framework. Rifles and guns were part of my schooling thankfully, so I know my way around them

dogpilot wrote:Mimika Air was the company with the Porter accident. My aircraft was their last. The operating certificate got sold to Nacachi, who re-named it Asian One. Most of the lads I know are on the other side of the island. My Geologist buddies have all gone down to Australia to work on some gold deposits in the GFA.

Mimika Air don't really exist any more. The guys working the ramp and airport office now help with our operation under Trans Mimika. They seem to be pretty well connected and can rustle up last minute cargo to fill in for cx flights. The rice is never ending!

Love the video, but there's something I simply don't get. Who's footing the bill? From listening to you and DogPilot, it sounds like there's half a dozen operators with some serious equipment, hauling rice and- no disrespect intended- folks that don't exactly appear to have a thriving cash economy???

I'll shut up and go back to enjoying the pretty pictures now. Thanks for sharing!

I was about to ask the same question as Denali. What are the economics of these operations?

Absolutely stunning video, though.

The money comes in a rather round about way. The largest gold mine in the world is there, in a really , really hard to get to location. There is also oil. So the Indonesian government pays the operators something like essential air services to operate. They subsidize the cargo and so on. They have regional operators that are literally patronage positions (Mimika Air was one such, went bankrupt as a result of the accident and poor practices). So the mining and oil operations pay the government royalties. The government in turn, spreads it around to get some kind of transportation network. There are no roads to speak of. This is a bit of a give back to the indigenous population, rather like the North Slope's indigenous subsidies the oil companies pay the borough. The locals do get restless, there was a battle at the Timika airport a few years back.

There used to be some real heaps flying there, but high accident rates made the Indonesian government to ratchet up the equipment requirement. The mining companies and the oil companies have also put some high bars on the equipment operating with them. So no beat up series 100 Otters there. My ex-director of Maintenance is on the other side of the island maintaing two brand new series 400 Twin Otters. Which only fly a few hours a month. It is nuts, have to put tons of glass panels in the aircraft to impress the DCA, to gain approval for the aircraft. There are quite a few Aussie and Kiwi pilots three. The insurance companies have mandated fairly stiff experience requirements to the operators as a result of a fairly high loss rate. The national carrier, Garuda just got approval to fly to Europe again. They had a fairly horrendous loss rate and loads of violations. So the DCA has been fairly strict for the last few years.

Indonesia simply cannot function without aircraft. It is a myriad of islands and peninsulas that have big stretches of water in between. So the government had several regional operators that where, in all intents and purposes, para-statials. They did this to keep economics of operation reasonable and the operators making enough money. They allowed the operators numbers to swell in recent years, and the economics took a hit as did the maintenance and training. So now they are back full circle.

I ended up repossessing my Twin Otter that was there. Not to be deterred the operator kept sending requests for more aircraft. We did the repossession in a friendly way. So they send deposits and we locate aircraft. As of late, no aircraft deals have gone the full route, but the deposits keep me interested. I get to go to Burma to do the inspection this year instead of Carins, Australia. I suppose Rangoon will offer a new type of cuisine for my foreshortened gut to process.

^^^^^^ Ok that makes some sense. I've heard of Air America hauling "rice", but if this was that kind of gig, I don't expect IndoPilot would be posting videos!