August 10. 2021 The Shortest International Flight

The Liberty Gazette

August 10, 2021

Ely Air Lines

By Mike Ely and Linda Street-Ely

Mike: The first time I landed at Brown Field near San Diego, I was a student pilot flying my long cross-country, approaching it from the northeast. I made a steep descent over the Otay Mesa straight in for Runway 26 Right. The terrain was steep on that side, and it felt like I was swooping down on the airport. 

Brown Field is one mile north of the U.S.-Mexico border. One mile south of the border is Gen. George Rodriguez International Airport in Tijuana. The runways at these two airports parallel each other on an east-west alignment.

Years after my student solo flight, one of my coworkers, who was getting married, wanted to honeymoon in Mexico, on a budget. They found a great deal for airline tickets, but the flight started out in Tijuana. Driving there would have taken two hours, and they would have had a long wait to cross the border. I offered to fly them, my first time to fly internationally. 

Brown Field had a VOR approach from the north from which planes would circle right or left to land. If they were going into Mexico, they simply crossed over the airport and flew to Tijuana International, or so I thought.

The day after the wedding, the weather was instrument conditions when we started out but cleared as we got further south, turning into to a warm, sunny day. As I neared Brown Field on the instrument approach, after some confusing conversations with the tower controller, I cancelled my IFR flight plan, which I should have kept until I was in Mexican airspace. I flew over Brown Field, and the controller told me to contact Tijuana tower as I crossed the border.  

It is a fact that English is the international aviation language, but you might imagine how well that works in some places in the world. International airports are supposed to have English-speaking controllers available, but that doesn’t always happen unless they have advance notice. 

I called Tijuana tower for our landing clearance and got a reply in Spanish. I could not cross back into the United States because I didn’t have a flight plan filed for that. For twenty minutes, I circled over Tijuana Airport. A Mexicana DC-10 taxied down the runway – there were no taxiways. After the DC-10 turned around and departed, someone speaking English came on the radio and cleared me to land. Once on the ground, I learned that they had grabbed someone from the administration building to talk to me. 

The couple was whisked over to the terminal where they caught their flight with time to spare. I spent thirty minutes filling out a border-crossing flight plan and giving my ETA to U.S. Customs via an intercom that directly linked U.S. and Mexican Customs officials at the two airports. It took less time to make the flight. From Tijuana, I took off to the west and made an S-shaped pattern to land at Brown Field. Total five minutes to complete this international flight.

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