Hi there Travel Tarters, today I have an interview with Matt Dearden, who was featured on the great documentary called ‘Worst Place To Be A Pilot‘ which is about how expat pilots fly for Susi Air, an airline that flies to some of the remotest parts of Indonesia.
Matt runs his own website called the Bush Flying Diaries which chronicles his adventures in Indonesia.
These guys don’t exactly have the luxury of the latest automation gadgets you find on a Jumbo Jet. I think they require more skills to navigate their planes through some of the most spectacular, but most treacherous landscapes in the world!
Here is a trailer of the series:
Plus, they have to improvise a lot due to the environment they work in! Make sure you check out the documentary, it’s an eye opener!
You can also follow Matt on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and Vimeo.
Here it is!
The Worst Place To Be A Pilot Interview with Matt Dearden!
The Travel Tart: Hi Matt, thanks for the time to talk. For those out there in internet land who have managed to steer themselves away from the 90% of it that is cat videos and adult entertainment, tell us a bit about yourself and how you ended up flying throughout some of the remotest parts of Indonesia.
Matt Dearden: If only my internet was fast enough for those videos! I guess the short answer is I’m originally from the UK where I used to have a really normal 9-5 IT job until 2009 that I jacked in to become a pilot for Susi Air out here in Indonesia. I’m now flying their coolest aircraft, the Pilatus PC-6 Turbo Porter, in the mountains and jungles of Papua where I fly into the really remote villages tucked away into some of the craziest locations you can imagine.
The Travel Tart: What made you change your career so drastically from working in IT to becoming a pilot? They’re complete polar opposites!
Matt Dearden: Like many kids I’d always liked the idea of being a pilot from a fairly early age but was pretty focused on computers at the time (sadly a little too late for the dot com bubble). It turns out programming computers is really pretty boring but I wasn’t sure what I was going to do about it. Thankfully, during my private pilot licence training, I realized I could actually make a go of this flying malarkey as a career change, so went on to get my commercial pilot’s licence and somehow ended up here in Indonesia getting paid to fly in the world’s last frontier, Papua.
The Travel Tart: When I was watching ‘Worst Place To Be A Pilot‘ , I was gobsmacked at some of the landing strips that Susi Air pilots land on and take off from. They literally look like someone has taken a lawnmower to the top of a mountain! What criteria do you use to assess which of these strips are okay to land on?
Matt Dearden: I’ve always thought “If they call it a runway, we can land a Pilatus Porter on it” and for the most parts that’s pretty true out here. It’s mostly down to past experience when it comes to landing on a new airstrip but the main things we’re looking for are that it’s long enough to get in AND back out again, it’s firm enough to support an aircraft and it’s in a location we can actually position the aircraft into to land on.
The Travel Tart: In your time as a pilot what’s the most bizarre thing you’ve ever transported by air? My jaw dropped when I saw a few 44 gallon drums filled with hazardous goods being loaded into the plane!
Matt Dearden: Fuel drums, despite what they look like, are actually pretty safe. I’ve had plenty of bizarre cargo but I guess the strangest was a planeload of fake plastic trees, which you obviously need when going to an airstrip located in a dense jungle!
The Travel Tart: Just say you have a choice – trying to land one of your planes at altitude on a grassy landing strip that’s been mown on the top of a mountain with crosswinds in Indonesia, or stepping on-board a Soviet era rust bucket (circa 1960s) as a passenger for a 2 hour flight across the Russian steppe where the seat belts are not functional or available! Yes, I definitely said a lot of Russian Swear Words that day! That’s after watching the ground crew bolt in a few extra rows of seats to fit everyone in whilst the passengers are waiting on the tarmac. I’ve done the latter so I need a benchmark!
Matt Dearden: I’d take what I do every time! I’ve been on a few sketchy flights as a passenger out here with similar setups to that, although they were taking seats out to make the 737 lighter for the take-off!
The Travel Tart: I have a morbid fascination with Air Crash Investigations. Because I’ve been on a lot of planes, I’m amazed at how just a simple mistake or tiny part can bring a plane down. What’s been your biggest ‘crap your pants’ moment when flying, either as a pilot or passenger?
Matt Dearden: Love that show! I suppose it wasn’t so much as crap my pants as vomiting everywhere. I got a nasty dose of food poisoning that pretty much incapacitated me thanks to the nausea it caused in-between me vomiting all over the cockpit. Pretty scary knowing you have to land the thing when you can barely sit up straight without throwing up!
The Travel Tart: One thing that I really took away from the series is how you guys improvise with the limited resources available to you. Just wondering, if you really, really had to, would you use duct tape to repair your plane?
Matt Dearden: I always keep a roll handy and have used it once or twice to fix the stone guards which seem to break off fairly regularly. It can also be used to patch holes left by stones being thrown up by the tyres on landing at rough airstrips before you get it back to maintenance to fix properly although speed tape is better for that one.
The Travel Tart: You pretty much have to do everything on your Pilatus Porter, including the announcements because you don’t have any flight attendants to do that for you! Have you ever been tempted to say something like ‘If you see one of the engines fall off the wing mid flight, please kindly inform one of the cabin crew’ ?
Matt Dearden: Ha! If I have a passenger next to me at the front I do like to tell them not to grab my arm or leg if they get scared. Or even worse grab the door emergency jettison handle which has happened to a colleague, luckily whilst they were still on the ground.
The Travel Tart: What is the best part of your job?
Matt Dearden: Tricky question as I love most of it. I guess the best bit is departing whilst it’s still almost dark, just as the sun is rising and watching it slowly light up the amazing mountain scenery here in Papua. Magical stuff.
The Travel Tart: I’m sure you receive enough adrenaline seeking thrills from your job! What do you do in your down time?
Matt Dearden: Well I’m not one to sit down a read a book or watch TV, so I prefer to go mountain biking, sea kayaking, hiking/exploring the local areas and even scuba diving when I can.
The Travel Tart: Thanks for your time Matt, and here’s hoping I won’t see you on Air Crash Investigations!
Matt Dearden: Cheers! Although we best not mention that sort of thought to my mother!
I’m almost keen to hitch a ride with Matt in Papua!
Anyway, check out ‘Worst Place To Be A Pilot’ and make sure to follow Bush Flying Diaries to keep up with Matt’s adventures!
I don’t think you’d want to be flying in these planes on a Flying Nurse Medical Repat! I think I’d rather catch the bus on a dodgy border crossing!
What a tough job … but the views certainly make up for it!
Ha, but not if the views are coming up too quickly!