Further to my previous post, here's a news item from the
Guernsey Evening Press and Star, dated 31st May 1974:
This recorded the occasion of Sierra-Victor's last flight with BIA. Morton Air Services, a BUA subsidiary, had merged into BUIA when Alan Bristow reorganised the BUA group in 1968. Later, at the end of 1970, when BUA mainline was taken over by Caledonian to form BCAL, BUIA was not included in the merger. Accordingly, it was renamed BIA. (The scheduled part of BIA later merged with Air Anglia to form Air UK.)
A number of the Morton's Dakota skippers, who were too old to qualify to be licensed on the Dart Herald and were flying Daks simply as a retirement job, had continued flying them through the above reorganisations. They included Joe Rechka, Dudley Scorgie and Dan Skillman, of whom the first two are seen in this newspaper photo. The retirement of SV, BIA's last C-47 Dakota, left them out of a job. Though aged 64, Joe soon found employment on Daks elsewhere, but I don't know what happened to Dudley Scorgie or Dan Skillman.
Joe's main British airline career had been with Transair and BUA, culminating on Viscounts. His career had included test flying, two spells with his native Czech airline, CSA, escaping from Prague in 1939. He had flown Hurricanes in the Battle of Britain and, after his second, post-war stint with CSA, escaped a second time in 1950 when he and two other ex-RAF colleagues commandeered a Dakota and flew it to Manston with their families. But that's another story...