Fire in the skies

KL-BWN

Altitude: 2000ft

Time: 1603z/0003local

Position: Final approach RWY03 BWN

In all my years of flying commercial jets, this one was a first.

Night approaches into the Kingdom are a pretty mundane affair. It's rarely busy and i would call it boring even but i like it boring. It keeps my grey-hair factor down. 
Tonight though, the skies above our sleepy town was alive.

As we break cloud, i notice fireworks. 

Not one but two, three, four. Wait a minute. What's going on? Then i realised, its Chinese New Year and we were witnessing what would probably be a grand total of over a million brunei dollars worth of paper and gunpowder burning in the skies.

Its everywhere. Over Sengkurong, Gadong, Bandar, Subok, Berakas.

I got over the PA and told our pax to look out as this was a rare sight.

What i didn't expect was that as we got closer to ground, there were a few being lit quite close to our flightpath.

I told the first officer who was flying the approach to just fly it steady on the ILS glidepath. 

It wasn't that close but it was enough to have me worried for a second. 

Although if i looked at it from another perspective, we were being welcomed to land with fireworks. 

My trusty and able lieutenant smooched it on the tarmac and we landed with great fanfare into the Chinese Year of the Horse.

Life on the line continues....