A number of years ago, I had quite a bit of work to do in Jakarta, Indonesia and before returning to Manila, where we lived at the time, I had a couple of things to do in Medan. Medan is located in the Indonesian province of North Sumatra. Claire met me in Singapore where we spent a few days and she accompanied me to Medan.
The trip was memorable — probably more so for Claire than me. We intended to stay at a friend’s house, but after spending a nice evening with them, when they showed us to their “guest house” turning on the light in the bathroom revealed more than a hundred (big) roaches. This isn’t an exaggeration… the floor was completely covered. Needless to say, we went to town and checked into a hotel. But there’s more to this story, and a good subject for another time.
What I intend to talk about was the Medan International Airport. What made me think of this is all the news about the Boeing 737 Max and all the safety issues associated with it. At the time we visited Medan, the 737 was relatively new, but it went through a few growing pains to correct a number of safety related problems. We flew a Malaysian Airlines 737 from Singapore to Medan; the day before we left, the station in Singapore had received an advisory concerning a safety warning for the 737s. We had no problems on the flight and landed at Medan without incident. However, Claire was amazed at the airport — it didn’t look like an international airport. There was a single asphalt runway, 140 feet wide and 9800 feet long, but only 9000 feet of the runway was usable. At both ends of the runway were houses — in fact, the airfield was completely surrounded by a residential area.
The airport basically served flights to several Indonesian and Malaysian cities, but did have a flight to Singapore and Thailand. The official name of the airport was Polonia International Airport and it operated until 25 July, 2013 when the new airport, Kualanamu International Airport opened. The old airport now belongs to the Indonesian Air Force.
I remember asking about the very close proximity of houses to the runway, and was told that the airport was deliberately located in the wealthy Polonia area because of an Indonesian superstition that the loud noises from aircraft drive away malevolent spirits. Strange world…..
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LOL! Love these stories! So every 5 to 15 minutes the malevolent spirits are being driven from our house? Granted we’re no at the end of the runway…but we live close enough and in roughly two and a half weeks the Thunderbirds will be flying over our house. We had an F-18 or 22 on Friday. Wish I had the camera it was right over the house.