Does the company you work for brief you at all on your destination? Can they give you a small whitepaper detailing the political climate/uncertainty of a given country, places in the destination to avoid, things to be careful of, etc?
Oh man that's funny! Not only "NO" but a "Hell No!". We would normally have a hotel set up, but that's about it. It'd be up to the crew (ultimately, Capt's responsibility) to figure out how to get there, and the harder part is normally trying to get back to the plane if you were operating out. Plus, normally none of the required paperwork was on board (Jepps, runway analysis, OEI procedures) and you needed to figure out how to get the company to get that to you. Some quality comedy:
- spend over an hour trying to get from the front door of the airport to the plane in Addis Abbaba, at 0300L - even though the company had been operating there for 2 months nobody had spread the gouge. Not just Addis though, this was a regular occurance.
- After flying through a region for months, the company found out during an FAA inspection we were flying through a region with a "no (American) fly zone"..that had been there since 1984.
- Flying Africa and S. America, every service (ATC, CFR, Security) seems to have a "fee" and wants hard US$ but we were never given a cash stash. Got good at talking my way out..."Our agent paid in the capital city!" "but this isn't the capital city my friend!"....Doh!
- Since there are no vans set up, a local taxi shat it's tranny...the crew ended up pushing it for a mile to the hotel! Fairly common for the taxi drivers to try to get extra $ from you and if you didn't pay to call the cops and tell them you wouldn't pay the fee.
- A week after operating into a 3rd world country (optimistic evaluation), the company forwarded a state department warning from a month prior advising Americans to avoid the region due to widespread violence and kidnapping against foreigners!
It was always an adventure..and I got good at doing my own research before going to a new place. Knowledge is power and the company wasn't sharing, if they had it.
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