Lost

                                                                              Pago Pago, American Samoa

I walked across the hot ramp at Pago Pago Airport to the waiting airplane. It was a 9 passenger, British-built Islander. Aptly named, I thought, since I was about to take it island hopping among Samoa’s rural Manua islands.

I was 27 years old. It seems like a very long time ago.

Three weeks prior I had been walking through the financial district of foggy San Francisco trying to get a foot in the door to what would be my first flying job. While I had toyed with other paths in my life – I had been admitted to law school, and given some thought to the foreign service as well as teaching, I knew my love was with flying.

I opened the cockpit door and looked inside. This would be my very first commercial flight as a pilot in command.  I had flown my first two weeks in Samoa as a copilot on the company’s other aircraft, a DeHavilland Twin Otter.  I was a low-time pilot and I knew that my first flying job would be somewhere where the more experienced pilots wouldn’t bother.   And so I ended up in Pago Pago, American Samoa, smack in the middle of the South Pacific Ocean.

I placed my maps and paperwork on the right seat.  With only nine passenger seats, only one pilot was required by regulations.  A Samoan woman walked up to the airplane. She would be my only passenger for the flight.  She was about 40 years old and quite big.  No, make that very big.

She sat just behind my seat.  I went through the checklist recalling the short training flight the chief pilot had given me the day before.  It was a simple twin engine airplane.  For a pilot the numbers were easy to remember.  65 knots for takeoff and 65 knots for approach to landing.  In cruise you kept it at 130 knots to be kind to the airplane.

A map showing the various islands was stuffed in the side pocket near the pilot’s seat.  Today we would be flying to Ofu.  Ofu and Olosega, a figure-8 set of two islands that almost touch, are part of the three Manua Islands.  The airline flew there once a day -- whenever they had time.  There were no phones on the outer islands, so the protocol was to buzz the village to let them know the plane was arriving, then swoop across the island to the coral sand runway and wait for the villagers to arrive.

The map had a straight line drawn on it from Pago Pago Airport to the island of Ofu.  Along the line was written “83° -- 36 min.”  The line to Tau said, “86° -- 42 min.”   So after take-off I turned the plane east and nailed the compass at a heading of 83 degrees, then glanced at my watch to start the 36 minutes.

We leveled off at 5,000 feet.  The brilliant tropical clouds danced below us and peeking between them was the beautiful blue South Pacific Ocean.  I was a half a world away from everything I had ever known and I was in heaven.

About thirty minutes later as I descended below the scattered clouds I looked around for Ofu.  It was nowhere in sight.   Great!” I thought to myself.  “My very first flight and I’m lost!”

In my short time flying in the South Pacific it became apparent how difficult it was to see islands from the air.  Each puffy white cloud casts a dark shadow on the coral blue sea painting a picture of what looks like hundreds of islands.   An island could easily hide among these illusions.

Ofu left, and Olosega                                                                                          

After another minute or two of looking left and right the lady sitting behind me tapped me on the shoulder with her very large finger.

“We should have been there by now!”

“Um…Yes, I know.”

Just then, far off to my left, I saw a shadow that had peaks!  It was an island.

I banked the plane steeply left and said -- with as much confidence a lost, 27 year old pilot on his first flight could muster -- “There it is.”

As the island grew closer her very large finger found my shoulder again.  “It’s the wrong island,” she scolded!

I grabbed the map and looked at it again.  There were only three islands out here, so it was a simple matter of trying to figure out which one it was.   If it wasn’t Ofu, it could only be Tau.

“It’s Tau,”I told her, knowing she probably knew that already. “Ofu and Olosega are on the other side,” I added, realizing she probably already knew that, too.   How did we get so far off course? I wondered.

Soon, with the island’s village of Alaufau off to our right, I pointed the nose down and let the plane scream toward the shoreline while I turned toward the cluster of buildings.  As we flew about 500 feet above the rooftops I cycled the propellers causing the engines to roar.  We pulled up smartly and climbed back out over the crystal blue water.

That was the most fun I think I had ever had in an airplane!

                                                                                                  Olosega and Ofu

Looking for any excuse to do it again, I turned to my passenger and said, “I’m gonna do it one more time just to make sure they heard!”  And once again we roared low over the village and pulled up steeply for the lazy flight around the coast to the landing strip.

The runway was actually a patch of coral sand about 2,000 feet long and more than a football field wide.  When we touched down, no brakes were needed.  The plane slowed on its own from the softness of the ground.

I taxied over to the side, shut down the engines and stepped out.  I opened the door for my brave passenger and helped her down onto the hot sand.  I gave her a step stool to sit on and the big overhead wing on the Islander conveniently shaded us while we waited for the villagers to arrive.

After several minutes I realized what an odd sight we were.  A big Samoan woman who knew very little English and a skinny 27 year old kid who knew no Samoan, sitting there on stools next to each other under the shade of an airplane wing on a sandy expanse along the ocean.  In the middle of nowhere.

“You live here?” I asked.  That was stupid, I thought. Of course she lives here.

She didn’t say anything.

We must have sat there for over a half hour.  I stood up.  Did I land on the wrong island?  Of course not, she would have jabbed me hard with her finger.  She must know every square inch of these islands, I thought.

I wondered if anyone had heard us back in the village. I walked over to the water's edge and looked in.  It was crystal clear with submerged rocks and colorful fish visible from where I stood.  It was peaceful here.

Later, some sounds. And at the far end of the landing strip a cloud of dust.

I walked back to the airplane.  Within a minute or so a small Toyota pick-up truck was bouncing down the runway toward us.  A rooster tail of dust rose up behind it. The truck stopped beside the plane.  The back of the truck was sitting low, close to the ground from the weight of all the people crammed into the back.  The driver's door opened and a young woman got out holding a clip board.  On the passenger’s side an older man, barefoot and wearing nothing but a traditional lava-lava skirt, climbed out.  He was the village chief.  And she was his daughter.

I had learned earlier that I had little to say about who got on the flight or what they could bring. The chief made those decisions. His daughter spoke English and introduced herself to me. “I'm Moka. Are you new?” she asked.

“Yes. I'm Pat."

She was about my age and was very pleasant. “Welcome to Ofu. You will have to come visit some time when you can stay longer.”

Her father was covered with warrior-like tattoos.  I suppose they were very prestigious. The chief stood there and talked quietly with people, but it was the daughter who was organizing the transfer of luggage from the truck to the plane and telling people where they would be sitting.

A young boy who was staring at me walked up slowly and said, "Hello palagi," the Samoan word for white person.  

I smiled and asked Moka if the boy could ride in the front seat. "He's not going with you.  He just came out to see the airplane."

Finally the five passengers climbed aboard, Moka gave me their tickets and we said good bye. I looked over at the Toyota pick-up and saw my passenger from Pago Pago sitting in the back more than ready to go home.

 Islander.          Copyright Sam Pollitt                                                                     

We taxied back to the far end of the landing strip, turned around and accelerated down the runway toward the pick up. I looked out the window and saw the chief’s daughter Moka and the young boy waving good bye as we turned toward Pago Pago.

And so began my life of flying.  33 years later with a life time of flying across the oceans to almost every continent, I know that the pinnacle of my career will in many ways never compare to the simplicity and beauty of flying in Samoa many years ago.

_________________________

After returning to Pago Pago I reported my off-course journey to the chief pilot.  He looked at me for a moment, then mumbled, “…Oh, I forgot to tell you, the compass on that plane is broken. You have to subtract 12 degrees when flying to the islands.”   It was, I would learn again, one of many occupational hazards of flying for a lean-budget operation in a far corner of the world.