Got the Kabul by the horns

The sagas of military air transportation
Part 4

The latest installment of flying mil air is almost a dream.
We left Camp Stone at the appointed time, reached the airport in a matter of minutes, sat around for less than an hour and hopped on small passenger plane. Then we flew to Bagram Airfield, said good-bye to a couple of passengers, and took off again for an 8-minute flight to Kabul.
Less than seven hours after leaving Camp Stone, I was back in my room at Camp Phoenix Monday afternoon unpacking the duffel bag. That sure beat the four-day, 19-hour ordeal of getting to Herat.
More important, the aircraft was comfortable. It offered leather seats and plenty of legroom compared to the red nylon netting and cheek-to-jowl seating arrangement of a C-130 transport plane.
But maybe all this comfort and efficiency was due to the fact that the flight back to Kabul had been outsourced.
I perused the laminated card with safety instructions and discovered we were flying on Presidential Airways. Just the name made me feel like I was a VIP.
Then, I noted the two-man crew was wearing uniforms of Blackwater Aviation, a subsidiary of Blackwater USA.
Blackwater is the North Carolina contractor that handles a lot of work once done by the military, such as providing security for U.S. government officials in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Most of us had never heard of the company until March 31, 2004 when insurgents captured and murdered four of the company’s employees in Fallujah, Iraq. You may remember the photo of their corpses hanging from a bridge.
According to various reports the CIA has hired both Presidential and a sister Blackwater company, Aviation World Wide Services, to fly suspected terrorists to torture camps in Europe.
Presidential was criticized by National Transportation Safety Board investigators following a November 2004 plane crash into the side of a mountain in Afghanistan that killed three U.S. soldiers and the three-man crew.
An investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board found that “the crew deliberately avoided the standard route and took a joy ride in another direction, eventually becoming trapped in a canyon and slamming into a mountainside,” the Virginian Pilot newspaper reported.
I must say, though, that our crew seemed to be seasoned and professional. There was no short-cut through the mountains and, thankfully, no joy-riding.
Presidential provided us with a very decent ride.
Just wondering, though, if they offer frequent flyer miles. I’d like to sign up.