The Malaysian Oil Palm Growers Council (MPOGC) meetings were held twice a month in Kuala Lumpur. Tan Sri Borge Bek-Nielsen was expected to chair the meetings if he was in Malaysia. For him, time was of the essence. So, he would choose to fly in United Plantations’ (UP) well-maintained but rather spartan Piper Cub, rather than drive.
Kuala Lumpur’s first airport in Sungei Besi was an hour’s cross-country by light aircraft from the UP headquarters at Jendarata Estate, whereas the drive might take up to three hours, dependent on traffic.
On this occasion, Bek had received an invitation to attend the MOPGC meeting, followed by a commemorative dinner at a hotel. Puan Sri Gladys Bek-Nielsen was glad of the opportunity to visit Kuala Lumpur and meet friends over dinner. If she accompanied Bek, she wouldn’t have a car to visit friends until his Volvo from Jendarata caught up with her in Kuala Lumpur. So, she gracefully declined Bek’s offer of a lift in the Piper.
Bek had his usual rather rushed breakfast, punctuated by a phone call and time taken up at the breakfast table to read his briefing notes for the meeting – paperwork which couldn’t otherwise easily be handled in the Piper’s cramped cockpit. Jendarata’s airfield was five minutes from the house. When he arrived, the Piper’s tank had yet to be filled, as the hangar assistant was awaiting instructions. By the time this was done, Bek was running against the clock.
In Tanjung Malim, meanwhile, UP plantation inspector Peter Cowling had taken off in a Beechcraft Bonanza, with Marshall Pike of Harrisons and Crosfield’s Camberley Research Station. The Beechcraft made a leisurely circuit of the flatlands of UIE, the newly-replanted former Gula Perak sugar plantation. Peter’s predecessor, Ken Stimson, had supervised UIE’s programme of peatlands compaction, targeted to prevent 10-15 year-old oil palm trees from ‘lodging’ or falling over due to poor root anchorage in the very loose soil.
The previous day, Marshall had been shown photographs of tracked hydraulic excavators stacking soil out of drains into the planting rows, and compacting the ground before excavating the planting holes. “Simple when you know how!” he remarked.
Peat compaction and ‘hole in a hole’ planting techniques had been pioneered at Jendarata by Ken working together with UP research director and well-known soil expert, Dr Ng Siew Kee. Peat compaction had revitalised the profitability of oil palm on peat, and had effectively extended crop rotations by a couple of years.
‘Mayday! Mayday!’
Bek was soon nearing the end of his familiar cross-country traverse from Jendarata to Sungei Besi. At altitude 3,000 feet, he was seven or eight miles from the airport and had reached the ‘five-minute out’ call point to report his position to the control tower.
The Piper was cleared to continue its approach, given its runway direction and to descend to circuit altitude. All of a sudden, violent vibrations shook the little aircraft. Bek’s first reaction was that the propeller had shed a blade – but no.
Oil splattered on the windscreen. The Lycoming engine revolutions died down from over 2,000 to only a few hundred and the airspeed bled off alarmingly.
“Mayday! Mayday! Mayday!” Bek informed the control tower. “I am 2,000 feet above the Central Station/Hilton Hotel complex; apparent engine failure; we are maintaining best glide speed towards Sempang and three or four minutes out.”
He turned on the Piper’s landing light in the hope that it was still operational and coaxed his shuddering little aircraft towards Sungei Besi’s nearest boundary fence. His eyes searched the intervening rows of tall office blocks for alternative landing sites. Almost every space was heavily built-up and the roads were choked with morning traffic.
Peter and Marshall were about 15 minutes away from Sungei Besi; they heard Bek’s urgent warning and acknowledged the airport approach controller’s instruction to hold their present position to the northwest. Other aircraft were similarly notified; a Selangor Flying Club Piper trainer which had just taken to the air was diverted out of Sungei Besi circuit and re-cleared to hold its position to the south.
In Bek’s little Piper, the vibrations remained intense; the propeller was still turning and the engine was firing intermittently despite its lack of oil – the remains of which were draining off the windscreen. Bek nursed his failing Piper to clear the nearest Sungei Besi boundary fence with only a few feet to spare before touching down on the rough grass perimeter. He jumped out immediately with his bag and quickly put distance away from the smoking engine.
A fire tender arrived to spray foam over the engine cowling. A second tender gave Bek a lift to the control tower to file his report. “My God,” he told the controller, “another of my nine lives gone! But, just imagine – I offered Puan Sri Gladys a lift this morning, but for some reason she declined. Women’s intuition!
“I will speak to her when there is a tea-break and I can use the telephone. Otherwise rumours about my arrival will catch up with her somewhere in Kuala Lumpur. Just imagine where we would have ended up if she had been on board the Piper. She must have known she was better off on the ground than in the air!”
Peter and Marshall landed only a few minutes behind their schedule and met with Bek – who was still writing out his incident report – at the control tower. “Cutting it fine?” enquired Peter, ducking as Bek’s well-aimed newspaper flew past his head.
Mr Fun, the Selangor Flying Club’s long-time Chief Instructor, looked in and asked whether Bek had received prior warning that the Piper’s Lycoming engine had a defective cylinder head.
Bek replied in the negative before considering for a minute: “Fortune follows the brave,” he said, quoting Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen. “Can I hope to do better?”
From that day on, Bek was known to his friends as ‘The Great Dane’.
Moray K Graham
Retired Planter
