Magnificent seven cross finish line

The Vintage Air Rally is over. Twelve started. Seven finished.

The successful flyers in their vintage 1930s-era biplanes crossed the finish line in Stellenbosch, about 50 kilometres (30 miles) east of Cape Town midday Friday, South African time.

Pedro Langdon, the never-say-die Canadian, made it, and in one piece, too.

Maurice Kirk, the eccentric Pom, was not so lucky.

After being detained briefly in Ethiopia, Kirk, 72, took off for Kenya but somehow made a wrong turn in midair and ended up in South Sudan instead. Not cool. On landing, Kirk was apprehended, robbed, beaten, jailed and, for his troubles, came down with malaria and sepsis.

Kirk, sadly, was not among Friday’s finishers, but he is alive.

The intitial 12 flying teams began the Vintage Air Rally trek on Nov. 12, on the Mediterranean island of Crete.

Rally participants represented numerous countries, from usual suspects like Germany, the United Kingdom and the U.S. to less usual suspects like Cyprus, Egypt, Botswana and Zimbabwe.

The motley crew of DH82 Tiger Moths, Travel Air 4000s — first manufactured in 1928 — Antonov AN2s and Boeing Stearmans tracked down the length of Africa from Cairo to Cape Town in 35 days — flying, as South Africa’s Mail & Guardian put it, somewhat uncharitably, “very slowly.”

This race was never about speed, though.

Nor was it really a race, not in the true sense of the word.

This was a flying exhibition, an air show in the purest sense of the expression — a meeting of early-20th-century derring-do and 21st-century aviation knowledge.

The idea was to recreate the famous 1930s Imperial Airways Africa Route that linked Cairo with sub-Saharan Africa and the emerging economy on the continent’s southern tip.

And while most present-day Africans can be forgiven for shrugging at a nostalgic throwback to colonial times, it was the kind of flying adventureAntoine de Saint-Exupéry dreams were made of.

A bureaucratic tangle on Ethiopia’s border with South Sudan — a “miusunderstanding” over paperwork and the required legal documentation — momentarily grounded the entire fleet, with a couple of flyers, Kirk among them, provided mandatory room-and-board as guests of local border authorities.

All in all, though, despite the occasional engine failure and “navigational misunderstandings,” the Vintage Air Rally proved a success. The flight crews who made it to the end say the memories — low-level flybys of the Egyptian pyramids, Ngorongoro Crater, Mt. Kilimanjaro, the Maasai Steppe, Zanzibar and Victoria Falls — will last a lifetime.

No vultures were injured during filming of the Vintage Air Rally, which is just as well as one of the charities supported by rally organizers was the South Africa-based conservation group Birdlife, backers of the #SaveTheVultures campaign.

The African vulture — arguably the continent’s most familiar and widely recognized bird — is in serious trouble, owing to indiscriminate use of poisoned bait (to kill jackals) and elephant poachers, who know that circling vultures can alert passing game rangers to the scene of their crimes.

Vintage Air Rally flying crews will be able to dine out on their tales of adventure for years to come.

It’s not often, after all, that dinner conversation includes anecdotes that begin: “As soon as we landed, these guys with military uniforms and big guns surrounded our plane.”

The misunderstanding in Ethiopia required the intervention of U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, according to the Mail & Guardian —  though a sceptic can be forgiven for thinking Sec. Kerry might have had more important things on his mind at the end of November, not least being the imminent handover of his job to a former executive from ExxonMobil.

In the end, though, it proved a smooth landing for more than half the flying teams to take off in Crete. As The Amazing Race’s Phil Keoghan would say: “Two continents, 10 countries, 13,000 kilometres, 8,000 miles in 35 days.”

Lita Oppergard, 68, from the great state of Alaska, told Agence-France Presse (AFP): “I thought Alaska is huge.

“But flying through much of Africa, like we’ve been through, I cannot even begin to get into my head how vast this continent is. It is just sheer, utter wilderness . . . beautiful.”

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Vintage Air Rally proving, well, real.

No one said it would be easy. Renowned eccentric Maurice Kirk, 71, one of the magnificent men in their magnificent flying machines making the cross-Africa trek as part of the Vintage Air Rally, in which nearly two dozen pre-1939 biplanes are flying from Crete to Cape Town, South Africa over 35 days, was reported missing over South Sudan earlier this month.

Maurice Kirk, Vintage Air Rally pilot

Of all the places to be reported missing in a rickety World War II-era flying machine, South Sudan is not as ideal as, say, the Hudson River.

As it happened, Kirk turned up alive and well — as an unscheduled guest of the Ethiopian state, provided free room and board in the local clink— just days later, in a dusty, flyblown outpost of the Sudan-Ethiopia border.

Perhaps Kirk’s paperwork had been in order, perhaps not. Either way, no one, it seems, bothered to give the border-post guards a heads-up, which is odd because South Sudan is, after all, a war zone. Viewed from afar, and unexpectedly, even a 1943 Piper Club plane can look suspicious. 

This is Africa, as Leo DiCaprio’s character was wont to say in the 2006 movie Blood Diamond. Forget the heat, the humidity and the vicious crosswinds. Never mind the bugs, the pestilence and the dangerous animals: It’s the bureaucracy that will get you every time.

By the time the contretemps was over — “This has all been a terrible misunderstanding,” was repeated more than once — the pilots of 20-something vintage planes were allowed to continue, Ethiopian officials confirmed with the BBC, underscoring another curious fact of life in modern-day Africa: When something goes seriously wrong, it’s often down to the BBC to sort it out.

As of posting, the pilots — and their magnificent flying machines — are cooling their heels in Nairobi, before winging off, Out of Africa-style, over Mt. Kilimanjaro to Zanzibar.

The planes, dating from the 1920s and 1930s, took off from Crete on Nov. 12 on their 12,900km (8,000 mile) journey to Cape Town. The rally is an attempt in part to recreate the 1931 Imperial Airways “Africa Route.” The flying teamsare expected to reach their destination on Dec. 17, barring further unforeseen difficulties.

The teams, complete with support aircraft and helicopter supply teams, are being piloted by flying enthusiasts from a wide range of countries, including Belgium, Germany, Botswana, South Africa, the UK, Canada and Russia. The rally includes husband-and-wife teams, fathers and daughters and entire families. One young woman pilot, from Botswana, is 15.

On the other end of the age spectrum, Kirk, it goes without saying, is the quintessential eccentric Brit, complete with a spotty past — he’s a former “drinking partner” of the actor Oliver Reed, The Guardian reported — and a knack for talking himself into, and out of, trouble.

By the time the border incident was over, the grounding and detention of pilots and their planes involved both Britain’s Foreign Office and the U.S,. State Department, this after Wesenyeleh Hunegnaw, head of Ethiopia’s Civil Aviation Authority, told the Associated Press that the pilots had entered Ethiopian airspace illegally and were “under investigation.”

Maurice Kirk

A spokesperson for the UK Foreign Office said simply: “We are in contact with the local authorities regarding a group who have been prevented from leaving Gambela airport, Ethiopia.”

Ah, yes, the language of international diplomacy. Gotta love it. 

The magnificent men — and women — in their magnificent flying machines had to surrender their cellphones and laptops, before being waved on to neighbouring Kenya. Presumably by now, iPhones and MacBook Pros have been returned to their rightful owners, assuming, that is, that the flying teams don’t include some actual spies.

And then there are the eccentrics.

Kirk had a near miss once in France, in his pre-Vintage Air Rally flying days, when he suffered engine failure in his plane, dubbed “Liberty Girl II,” while approaching Cannes. “That so easily could have ended in a tangled pile of twisted aircraft and Maurice,” he posted on Facebook. There very nearly was not a Liberty Girl III.

Africa, it goes without saying, is, well, big.

“Where am I?” Kirk posted angrily on Facebook, on Nov. 19. “I keep getting lost which is why I really wanted to go via Gibraltar and just keep the sea on my right to Table Mountain [Cape Town].”

As it is, Kirk has already suffered a puncture and propeller failure, not to mention that unscheduled stay as a guest of Ethiopian border authorities. He very nearly got himself disinvited from the rally before it even began, owing to what rally organizers called, “a mismatch in expectations.” There have been pluses, mind. Dongola, Sudan, will be a cherished memory for life, The Guardian reported him saying. “(This is) what life is all about … the fried fish fresh out of the Nile … the coffee you can [stand] your spoon up in.”

Ethiopian coffee, no doubt.

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