Times of the Islands Spring 2019

By contrast, the new air service between South Caicos and
Grand Turk took only 14 minutes.
However, to get airborne there was a lot of groundwork
to be done. “There were no roads in North and
Middle Caicos,” Embry recalls. “We kept building little airstrips,
literally chopping down tall bushes, and starting
to fly in there. We had three air strips in Middle, about
two minutes apart. You’d be up and down in no time. One
bigger settlement we couldn’t get into was Bottle Creek in
North Caicos. We were Her Majesty’s official mailman, so
we threw the mailbag out the window and hoped we’d hit
the post office! We never did figure out how to pick the
mail up from Bottle Creek,” he laughs. A short 800 foot
airstrip created in Providenciales was called the “Machete
Airport,” as that’s what locals used to clear the field.
Resources were limited, and they started with a
Cessna 180 four-seater, single engine airplane and a
from our seats. We had to walk 10–12 miles to the other
end of the island to get a ride home.” Embry recalls, “We
tried to avoid landing in downtown Grand Turk at night
because there were always donkeys and cows wandering
around. The strip was only 1,500 feet long, and you had
to be spot-on every time.” The airstrip was, in fact, a local
road—Church Folly. Once Embry had cleared the 20 foot
high power lines and the prison, he would have to drop
quickly to avoid crashing into the cemetery wall.
Self-regulation was the order of the day. “There was
no supervision or legal bodies at the time. I don’t think
they wanted to know because it was working. We were
using US registered airplanes. Most of the pilots were
American, Canadians and British, but everyone was really
well qualified, and they were very good at what they did.
We took Finbar Dempsey, the magistrate and judge,
around. It used to take him two weeks to go around the
islands by boat, so he wasn’t about to look for legal reasons
to shut us down!”
Residents now had the convenience of shorter trips,
with fewer concerns about bad weather and seasickness.
The country became more easily accessible, allowing its
development as a financial centre and tourist destination.
In 1969, Embry was appointed to the first tourist board to
promote the Islands. As the aviation industry developed,
Embry didn’t fly as much, and he took on a managerial
role at Turks & Caicos Airways. The company started regular
scheduled runs to Haiti and later ran their internal
airline. “I moved down there to set it all up, and lived
there for two years. I remember we started flying from
This was the house in South Caicos where Embry Rucker and his wife
Noreen (shown here with his mother Marianne at left) lived in 1968.
Twin Bonanza, which carried a pilot and two passengers
in the front, and three people in the back seat. “We found
the remains of a wrecked Cessna and we took the back
seat out and put it in the luggage compartment of the
twin Bonanza, to get two more passengers in. I was fairly
mechanically minded, and did a lot of the work on the
planes.”
Without aviation infrastructure, flying conditions
could be challenging. When Embry needed to land at
night for a medical emergency, a truck or car was pulled
onto the runway, shining its lights to guide him. “We had
some close shaves. Once, the landing gear collapsed
on a take-off in Conch Bar, Middle Caicos. The airplane
went straight down, nose first, and we ended up hanging
This 1975 image was taken in Haiti, where (from left) Embry Rucker,
Air Caicos Manager David Dumont and Philipe would regularly fly.
Times of the Islands Spring 2019 15