After an easy first day of flying on our "sprint" from Austin, Texas/KAUS to Guayaquil, Ecuador/SEGU, we were looking forward to another simple flight day on Monday, November 26 from Guayaquil to Santiago, Chile/SCEL with a quick fuel stop at Pisco, Peru/SPSO. The planned distance was 1,960 NM (2,250 SM) and both departure and arrival were scheduled in daylight hours.
Easy peasy.
The only problem was the Peruvian Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) was not cooperating. We needed a permit to overfly and land in Peru. The Peruvian CAA is notorious for, shall we say, less than efficient operation. Although we had requested that our over-arching international flight planning consultant begin the Peruvian permit process two weeks prior, as of Tuesday morning Peru said they had no record of our application. I had even obtained an FAA First Class medical certificate (for our operations I only need a Third Class per FAA rules) to make the Peruvians happy (they say they require a First Class medical for all operations).
I am not sure who "dropped the ball," but we woke-up Tuesday morning without permission to begin our flight. I got this cryptic message when I attempted to file our flight plan from Guayaquil/SEGU to Piso/SPSO on Sunday night...
Our carefully planned 0724 local departure from Guayaquil in order to arrive Santiago/SCEL before dark seemed unlikely. We called the handler and cancelled the 0630 local ground transportation pick-up at our hotel and set our alarms a little later. We would need to wait until the Peru CAA office opened at 0900 local to get any information on our permit.
The local handler at Guayaquil seemed to have a direct line to the Peru CAA permit office and hurried the process along, but it was still after 1100 local before we got the permit and could depart.
The modest, but comfortable Guayaquil handling office where we chilled for a couple of hours waiting on our permit...
The time waiting at the handling office in Guayaquil turned out to be useful. While waiting there, we got some fairly technical questions from the Chilean CAA regarding issuing our permit to fly to Easter Island. Basically, they wanted us to show them the data indicating we could arrive at Easter Island with at least three hours reserve fuel (based on cruise level fuel flow). I spent about 30 minutes crunching the numbers for them and got it turned around to them before we departed.
Once we launched, it was good weather and an uneventful flight to Pisco, Peru/SPSO. We went to Pisco rather than Lima because Lima now prohibits "technical" (fuel) stops. Turned out to be a good choice anyway because Pisco is a new airport and not very busy. We got a quick turnaround and were on our way to Santiago/SCEL.
On the way we were treated to a beautiful sunset over the Pacific Ocean as we approached the coast of Chile...
The flight to Santiago was also in good weather and easy until the very last part of the flight.
When approaching the airport we were told to expect an ILS to 17R which we dutifully loaded and briefed. Then they started vectoring us ultimately telling us to go direct to a fix we could not find on the approach plate. It seems the controllers had miscommunicated about which approach we were being vectored for as the fix they wanted us to go to was on another approach (17L). We finally said we just needed vectors to whatever ILS approach they wanted us to use. With that request, the controller vectored us back to the ILS for 17R which was good because it was still loaded and briefed. The weather was clear-and-a-million (although it was dark by this time) so we didn't have any concerns about finding the airport (we saw it about 30 MN out), but the confusing ATC instructions lead to some high workload in the cockpit. A good time to have a crew of two.
After landing, we taxied (using guidance from a "follow me" vehicle as the taxiways to the FBOs are very confusing at SCEL) to the Aerocardal FBO where we had spent a lot of time in January 2017 after our Antarctic flight. So, it was a familiar place to end the day.
Moral of the story if flying in this part of the world is triple check everything related to Peru permits and make sure they are finalized at least a couple of business days before your planned flight.
