Any activity, no matter how mundane attracted a crowd of Goofers. G-TIGN about to go filming. (Robin Hunt in life jacket.)
Same trip
Wonderful pose from our interpreter. No matter how hard we tried, once we were out of the cockpit it was almost impossible to prevent the Chinese pilots from shouting at Guangzhou on the HF.
Lovely bloke, but very keen on the camera.
Three of the engineers. Really nice guys who tried their hardest despite the language barriers. The interpreters always wanted to work with the aircrew, so the engineers got by with hand signals. Most of them were sent to France and Aberdeen to do full courses.
The other end of the flight line, PHI's 214s and two of the Navy Dauphins.
One morning a PHI pilot had rolled back the throttles and was completing his paperwork, imagine it's the nearest 214. The Chinese Co-pilot received an instruction to move the aircraft to another spot, to the right of the other 214 which was also turning and burning. The interpreter had gone with the passengers, so the co-pilot intimated by hand signals what was required. The American Capt said OK and went back to his paperwork for a second. Meanwhile the Co had wound up both throttles, anticipating a ground taxi manoeuvre the Capt looked up, just in time to see the other 214 slide beneath his aircraft.
He managed to grab everything and prevent a disaster. During the debrief the Co was unable to understand how dangerous his actions had been.
Shekou during the construction phase; looking towards the ferry terminal. One evening I was sitting having a beer when a carpenter rode past on his bike. A tea leaf grabbed the saw from the chippies bag and ran for it, onto the football pitch, right of photo. The carpenter called for help and eventually the thief was being chased by a dozen irate Chinese in a scene reminiscent of Peter Sellers best films. Eventually the thief was caught and beaten, the saw was retrieved. The carpenter returned triumphantly to his bike to discover the rest of his tools had disappeared.
British Airways were operating from Macao, across the other side of the Pearl River. They came under pressure to allow two Chinese pilots to fly their S61 to a rig, and allowed it to happen. Their crew returned to Shenzhen one day, the ex-pats got off and vowed never to fly with them again. Their views were unsurprising, the crew had taxied in with huge grins, heaved on the brakes and glibly pulled back both throttles simultaneously. Silly boy hadn't applied the tail wheel lock. The aircraft turned about 25-30*. They hadn't the sense to wind it up again and roll forward. When all was quiet they descended the stairs and gathered all the Chinese engineers, who were required to push the tail boom to get the tail wheel straight.
30 minutes later the saga continued. They managed to get the Chinese passengers to board, the ex-pats were refusing to, and I commiserated with them. The aircraft taxied out to the very short runway, our hero took off and in a show of bravado carried out a 360* turn, followed by a rapidly accelerating second and a third, which was even faster. By this time I was below the window ledge. He managed to stagger it into the air, slewed at a dreadful angle.
That was the nail in his coffin. A phone call to 'Nigel' in Macao was made immediately, detailing what had happened. The shaken ex-pats explained that numb nuts had commenced his rig approach at about 15 miles, by which point he was at 150'. Little yellow ears were reddened in Macao.