Airways February 2010 - British Airways Virtual

the bolt with his size twenty mallet and was amazed tosee that the temporary fix worked; off we went on ourway to Brazil. Not a word to Princess Alexandra ofcourse even when she and her husband kindly invitedme to join them for supper at their hotel during the nightstop at Dakar. It would obviously not be appropriate todiscuss who my least favourite VIPs were, sufficient tosay that some of them could be extremely difficult whileothers, like Princess Alexandra, were an absolute joy tofly. Lord Carrington was also very popular with ourcrews and I recall him during his time as the head ofNATO coming on the flight deck as we taxied in atBrussels and offering odds on whether we would getsteps to the aircraft within half an hour - Sabena werenotoriously delinquent in this respect.back to the land of the living; I flew with him veryhappily until I converted to the left hand seat in 1964.Although I already loved the transport world, captaincymade all the difference and as I have already intimated Iwas never completely happy as number two on the flightdeck. I continued to gain experience flying the “Slip” andby 1966 had achieved a B Category that only requiredthe addition of a VIP endorsement to allow me into thebig time, flying the high and mighty to exotic locationsaway from the RAF’s orbit. I soon gained thisqualification and my first real VIP trip was flying theChief of the Air Staff, Air Chief Marshal Sir CharlesElworthy on a global itinerary. I cannot resist listing theroute – Heathrow, Akrotiri, Bahrain, Colombo, Changi,Cocos Island, Perth, Canberra, O’Hakea, Wellington,Aukland, Fiji, Canton Island, Honolulu, San Francisco,Ottawa, Trenton, Chatham, Heathrow; all of thisbetween 9 March and 4 April 1966.This was without question the most satisfying period ofmy flying career, I eventually flew just about everymember of the Royal Family, all the prime ministersfrom Harold Wilson to Margaret Thatcher plus most ofthe then current cabinet ministers and service chiefs.One of my most memorable trips was flying PrincessAlexandra on an official visit to Brazil via Lisbon, Dakar,Recife, Sao Paulo, Rio de Janeiro and Brasilia but therewere many others, too numerous to mention in thisshort narrative.The accompanying photo (above) shows us smiling forthe camera during a re-fuelling stop; I am the goodlookingone standing next to HRH. I recall oneinteresting event that occurred on the Brazil trip; duringthe turn-round at Lisbon I was walking back to theaircraft when I saw what could only be described as atorrent of fuel departing the aircraft in the region of oneof the pod-tanks. Faced with having to declare theaircraft un-serviceable and the embarrassment of tellingHRH that we were going nowhere I was mightily relievedwhen the local BEA engineer declared in his bestScottish accent (engineers are always Scottish) that hecould stem the flow by driving a suitably greased boltinto the offending hole. I watched with horror as he hitApart from the Changi Slip, we also flew a once a weekschedule to New York JFK operated on a non-slip basisand this was a very popular break from routine. Thiscaused some hilarity among the rest of TransportCommand when it was learned that 216 Squadron had arule that insisted that you could not fly to the USAunless you had a B Category but you could not have a BCategory until you had been to the USA! A recent seriesof excellent programmes on Sky Television haveincluded the harrowing account of a South Americanaircraft running out of fuel at Kennedy after prolongedholding in bad weather.My most significant memory of Kennedy was an arrivalin a snowstorm with complete communications failureand my Station Commander playing at captain in the lefthand seat. We somehow managed to get down safelyand discovered that our problems had been caused by aflight deck visitor resting his camera case on theredundant signallers morse key! The last remnants ofthat unhappy breed were promptly removed from all fiveof our aircraft.