Luanda airport, c 2009, written while waiting. The balcony is sadly no more, subsumed by the modernisation project that has produced a much better airport, if one excludes the fact it lacks a good vantage point. The windows in the departure hall are at least large, but it’s not quite the same thing.
Luanda has one of Africa’s finest plane-spotting airports – not from the departure lounge, where narrow windows, thick concrete and blinds obscure the view, but from the small café on the first floor, accessible only before immigration. You check-in, assure your agent that you can manage on your own, and pass back through the passenger check and up the stairs. Agents generally do not like this as they are instructed to ensure you have gone through immigration and therefore, barring delays, have left their area of responsibility. This probably explains why there are relatively few foreigners amongst the coke-sipping Angolans out on the terrace.
20 or so tables are arranged outside, with umbrellas against the sun and potted palms around the edge, and there is a clear view over a low railing across the apron. To the left, the international airlines – today a pair of TAAG 777s, a TAAG 747 preparing to leave for Rio, and the Air France 777. I too will be on AF later, but from Johannesburg, 1500 miles to the south – booked out flights to and from Angola mean the 12 hour deviation via South Africa is often the only way to get in or out.
Ahead is the taxiway to the 2 runways, reasonably busy with helicopters heading offshore – ‘Super Puma’ 18-seaters and smaller Dauphins. To the right are the domestic airlines, beyond that the military aircraft, and in the distance the hulks of aging aircraft in various states of disrepair. Domestic airlines in Angola are many and varied – and include the not overwhelmingly popular 737s of the national carrier, TAAG, Sonair’s yellow-tailed fleet of Embraer 120s, Fokker 50s, 727s and 737s mixes with the orange logo’d Embraers of Air 26. Those two are my preferred Angolan carriers; Diexim is similar with Embraer 120s. Air Gemini with colourful MD80s in yellow and red with a pair of elelphants on the forward fuselage, ‘Airjet,’ which appears to have abandoned its jets in favour of turboprops, ‘Heli Malongo,’ Chevron’s own chartered Dash-8s in a smart red and grey, assorted 727s with various paint jobs that look more-or-less operational; a lone ‘Afrik-Trans’ 727 that looks decidedly un-operational.
Beyond them, the heavy-lift aircraft, both military and civilian and largely Russian-built Antonovs or Ilyshuns. Every now and then one lumbers out to the runway, puts on the brakes and cranks up the engines, to lurch forward once under full power and roar slowly forward and skyward with thick smoky trails in their wake. Almost as noisy are the smaller propeller-driven transports, their huge engines on top of the high, anhedral wings with a parachute ramp at the back. Dotted in and around these are various museum-pieces, many covered in a thick layer of dust.
The only problem is that immigration in Luanda can take an hour to work through, so it is necessary to leave the balcony well in advance – even before my South African 747 has arrived – to join the queue to be stamped out of Angola, x-rayed, searched and checked for Angolan currency, to join the majority of travelers who either do not know about the balcony or have been herded through security by their agent who wants to see the back of them and go home. Many are quite happy to do that, thinking they need assistance like an ‘Unaccompanied Minor’ to negotiate their passage through the airport. But as when I was an Unaccompanied Minor, I’d rather get rid of my escort, sit on the balcony, and take my chances in the scrum downstairs. It may be Luanda, but getting on a plane at the end of the day is not so different to anywhere else.
