The bush pilots in the Okavango Delta

2023-10-17 09:40:22

Samantha Steel was approaching a bush runway in her Cessna Caravan; the surface of the bright Kalahari soil, hardened in the sun, was already shining from a distance. Such simple landing sites can be found throughout the Okavango Delta. Early in the year, Africa’s most wildlife-rich wetland shimmers from above in all shades of green, and in between, these white towels keep appearing somewhere in the void. Just one kilometer long and quite narrow at 18 meters, they don’t offer the pilots much room to maneuver. “Suddenly I saw a pride of five lions lying on the runway threshold exactly where I wanted to touch down,” reports the 35-year-old pilot. There is hardly anywhere else in the world that has as many wild animals in a small area as the Okavango Delta in Botswana – and there are no fences, not even around the airstrips. The air route is essential for supplying the 74 lodges in the delta. Because there are no roads here, and the uneven sandy slopes are not usable all year round, nor are the water veins of the seeping Okavango River – what remains is the plane. And with it the need to reconcile the precision and safety margins required for air traffic with the unpredictability of African wildlife.

Animals love landing strips

It is not surprising that all representatives of Africa’s Big Five (elephants, buffaloes, rhinos, lions, leopards) like to frolic in the open spaces where the aircraft have to touch down. The pilots are trained for this case, they never land immediately, but first fly over the runway at a higher altitude and then, if necessary, again at low altitude. At the same time, a safari jeep from the next lodge is ready on the ground to clear the runway of animals before arrival to free. On her approach with a lion visit, Samantha Steel decided to do a low pass, a flyover at a low altitude, but with no effect. “The lions had just eaten, they had big bellies and were so lethargic that they didn’t want to move,” the pilot remembers. “I landed anyway, and our planes aren’t quiet,” says the South African, “but the lions didn’t move at all, they just don’t care, they’re used to airplanes.”