Rivets, also 84, has a memory of LBA that's so vivid it's as though I'm replaying the tape. 80's, in an F27. Night schedule.
Being checked by charming Chas from ABZ I'd been using huge handfuls of power during the approach onto 15. I recall telling our regulars that there was no bad weather about, it's just high winds coming off the hills that's making the air curly and if it exceeds certain limits I'd buzz off to Teesside. I was so full of BS.
Everything seemed okay when I landed - except the end of the runway was racing towards us in a strange an unnatural way. Tower's comment about 60 kts on the rear quarter just added to the dreamlike state. On the centreline. Pulling on the power levers fit to pull them out by the roots. Years on 1-11's counted for nothing. The reversers just were not working . . . or even fitted.
We were told to keep an eye out for the airstairs, last seen tumbling into the darkness. Our little girl needed Elastoplasts and Dettol, and a bloke hauling on smaller stairs was dispatched.
Immages of my memories still flood in. In the moments before coming to a standstill, I'd been recalling what the lighting poles look like when approaching from the other direction. How tall they were, and how tangled up one would be if subsiding onto them. These are just the kind of thoughts that could tempt one into taking a heavy bit of kit into the mud.