Nordseepiloten
Mit dem Lufttaxi übers Wattenmeer
In summertime, the East Frisian Islands are a tourist magnet. "I work here, where other people are on holiday." For more than nine years, the island pilot Claas Müller has been making nearly daily flights over the dike from the mainland to the island and back again, carrying the most diverse passengers: tourists, workmen, chimneysweeps, convoys of cleaning women, apothecary reps – even little baby seals. These wailing pups were rejected by the mothers, and must now be nursed back to health at an animal shelter. Most of his scheduled flights are between Harlesiel and Wangerooge, a trip of about 10 minutes. His colleague Rainer Luff flies charter guests all over the place: to Borkum, Baltrum, Juist, Norderney, and Helgoland. He can hardly complain about the number of passengers. Many guests have known the pilots for years. The pilots address the clientele with the informal "du," chat with them, and sit close by during flights – not like airline pilots, who sit behind cockpit doors. "I even carry their luggage," laughs Claas Müller. At peak travel times, he must load and unload up to five tons of luggage daily from the planes. He personally takes the aircraft to be washed every other day. This maintenance measure is particularly important because of the salt spray.
"With us, everything is done by hand. We navigate by sight, there is no radar or computer system on board with us." And precisely this represents his daily challenge, here in this island world, where storms and winds come and go, and the tides are all important: oftentimes, air passengers must be transferred to ferries when planes are grounded, and conversely, many ferry passengers want to fly because they have missed their boat, and the next scheduled trip leaves the following day.
We accompany the island pilots Claas Müller and Rainer Luff, along with everyone who has contact with them. We experience them transporting baby seals across the sea, comforting and appeasing air passengers when flights are canceled because Baltrum Airport is underwater for hours at a time due to the spring tide. We are there when strong winds blow, when nature becomes a wild antagonist, when the air taxis must turn back to safety, or cannot start out in the first place, so that passengers must rely on ferries. Or when 100 construction workers are transported by air to the islands on a Monday morning after the end of the summer building pause.
