Ewald Gritsch And Tracey Curtis Taylor
Ewald has been in touch via a third party who is not allowed to post on here.
This is what he says.
“
Navigational problems” on the African expedition:
A lot of pilots can tell you that TC is simply a good pilot (and navigator).
But the navigational problems TC had in Africa were caused by the lack of proper aviation maps, charts and information.
Her logistics manager S.R. was hired and well paid for providing the complete flight planning and navigational support for this trip. But in the end he failed to deliver a proper planning and documentation!
From Cape Town on Tracey and her team had to improvise the navigation and flight planning for the entire trip along Africa. As the expedition had already started she did this with whatever information she could gather along the route, e.g. from locals pilots. Yes, this lack of proper maps and information caused some tricky situations. But there were more organizational problems to come which caused a lot more difficult situations….caused by the logistics manager.
“Financial situation” of the expeditions, “Money making machine”:
Overall a part of the expedition costs was covered by the sponsors, a good part of it privately by Tracey.
Ironically the person who was earning by far the most money was S.R.!
On a sidenote all the sponsors are still happy with the success of TC and all of them knew from the early days on that it would not be a solo flight but a team effort. More than a dozen of these sponsors joined her on flights over various continents. Also no award was given on basis of the solo word, but on the fact that she had successfully organised and piloted these expeditions, as well as on the success of her outreach program “women in aviation”.
So as a conclusion these two major topics are 100% backfiring on Sam R.