Forgive me for resurrecting this old chestnut - but several years ago I came across on the internet what I think is my favourite photograph of an Autair Ambassador. Well of course I forgot all about it until recently and then I spent hours and hours searching 'The Web' without finding it. The other day I was tidying up my downloads and lo and behold...........
G-ALZS arriving at Blackpool very probably on the scheduled service from Luton.
Sadly on September 14th 1967 landing at Luton she aquaplaned and was written off. I was on holiday from Autair at the time but a couple of months later was Duty Ops when one of our two surviving Ambassadors commenced a night approach to Luton in weather conditions equal to if not worse than those that the Captain of G-ALZS had encountered. I quickly rang Air Traffic and asked them to pass a company message to the aircraft to "Divert to Stansted" (Nice long Runway there !) and off he went. In retrospect I, a callow youth recently promoted from Tea Boy cum Ops Asst, massively exceeded my authority. A couple of hours later the crew arrived. The Captain, Garth Hanchard Goodwin, a very experienced ex Fleet Air Arm Pilot smiled wistfully at me and said he would have got her into Luton without any difficulty. And quite honestly I expect he was right.........!
Photo Credit as captioned.
https://www.baaa-acro.com/crash/cras...ssador-2-luton