Briefcase
The old Vickers Vanguard (VC9) had access to the forward cargo bay from the flight-deck. There was carpet from the flight-deck door to the back of the 3rd pilot’s seat. If rolled back, this revealed a hatch in the floor which went down into the (IIRC) radio bay. From there another hatch went into the hydraulics bay and a third one took you into the forward hold.
We had occasion to utilize this one day when going on an inaugural flight to Budapest from Heathrow. As this was the first flight, we carried an airborne spanner as there was no station staff as yet. About twenty minutes after take off, the cabin chief came up and said that a first class passenger had just remembered that he had left his brief case in the forward lounge. Could we please alert the company and try to retrieve it? As we were still within range, we gave ‘Mother’ a call and passed the information. 5 minutes later we got a call back to say that the dispatcher has spotted it and (this being in the days before security), he had chucked it into the forward hold just before push-back. This gave the flying spanner something to do, so up came the carpet and the hatch and down went the engineer. There were several bangs and bumps and a certain amount of dust and then – lo and behold – up came the spanner clutching the briefcase!
We rang for the cabin chief and explained that we had sent a messenger back and here was the briefcase. We never explained.
Prober