70 Haifa - Masada
19. Feb 2010
After 2 nights in Haifa, I hired a car to drive to Tel Aviv, and after a night there, on to Jerusalem.
My plan had been to fly on to Tel Aviv – but after all the trouble of getting the approval to fly into Israel, I found out, that I was not allowed to fly the so called CVFR (controlled VRF) rules. That is only allowed Israeli pilots!
But Yigal from the Israeli AOPA, arranged that a fellow member of AOPA, would fly with me on the route from Haifa to Masada. I would have preferred to fly on Saturday – but as public transport closes down on Saturdays, it was arranged that Shlomo, the Israeli pilot who would come with me, came up to Jerusalem from Masada where he stayed, so he could ride with me in the rental car back to Haifa on Friday.
After lots of sightseeing Thursday afternoon I ventured into the Old City again Friday morning and on to the Olive Mountain for a perfect view over the Rock Dome and the walls of the Old City. At noon I met with Shlomo, and we left Jerusalem for Haifa, driving on a road that took us through part of the occupied territory. For most of the trip Shlomo explained about the Israeli – Palestinian conflict – strongly arguing from the Israeli point of view.
Back in Haifa we met with Yigal again, and he helped returning the hired car. The car hire office was closed for the Sabbath!
Shlomo had already, while we were on our way, made numerous calls to various air controllers, in order for us to be able to fly the route we wanted.
And he succeeded, so after takeoff from Haifa we flew CVFR south along the coast to Tell Aviv at 2000 feet, then from Tel Aviv IFR to Jerusalem at 6000 feet. Over Jerusalem we were allowed to descend to 4000 feet and circle the Old part of the town a couple of times, so I could get some pictures while Shlomo was at the controls.
Then we continued to Masada, the lowest airfield in the world, 1.240 feet below sea level! Weird to see the altimeter show a minus altitude before not showing any altitude at all!!
We landed just after sunset. We had dinner at the airfield with some local Bedouins sitting outside the airport office. I spent the night sleeping on a mattress in the same office!