Regarding the incident with the Ambassador nose cone the late Liz Overbury described it thus in Graham Simons' book 'Colours in The Sky':
"They were interesting times flying with Autair. On an early qualifying flight aboard the beautiful Airspeed Ambassador I was doing a series of stalls in an area between Luton and Stansted, flying with Captain Jan Szczesiak, when the nose-cone came loose and flipped up against the windshield, totally obscuring his view and much of mine. He was marvellous, briefing me to call directions left, straight ahead, or right and calling out what I thought of height from my view down to the landing, when the cone went down and he could see to control the aircraft on the landing run and taxi.
I had many flights with Jan, and as we both shared a love of animals, he showed me many European zoos when we had stop-overs. I could never understand why he ate so quickly and walked so fast until I found he had been a prisoner of war - it must have played hell with his life. He never mentioned these times to me, but otherwise I found him a real joy to fly with and he happily shared a wealth of flying knowledge with me - sadly he is no longer with us. I could never three-point a Viking, but I did get the knack of feather-bedding the Ambassador and the One-Eleven!"