Spanish No Fly
The route from UK to Cyprus to Bahrain was, in those days, as you describe.
However from there on The route took us over the UAE, Oman (Masirah Island) then straight across the Indian Ocean to Gan (or Colombo in later years) From either of those stops the route to Singapore was across the southern part of the Bay of Bengal to the tip of Indonesia (Medan on Sumatra) and across the Straits of Mallaca to S'pore.
This avoided India (best to do at any cost because it was, and I believe still is, impossible to get diplomatic clearance without stopping in the damn place).
The route to Hong Kong from Gan or Colombo took us up across the Bay of Bengal - avoiding the Indian Islands dotted around there - to Phuket and across a little bit of Thailand. Interestingly, while the Vietnam war was going on and the US effectively ran the airspace, RAF flights flew right across the 'Nam - not in my time on VC10s but I did it on the old Belfast. After the Yanks got kicked out of there, we had to then made a quite large detour around Vietnam and up the South China Sea to Hong Kong. Again we had to avoid certain islands belonging to the Phillipines and China.
Make no mistake, this was a scheduled airline type of operation and carried out to a very high professional standard. But, because it was military there were a number of wrinkles to overcome in the way of overflight clearances and this was a constantly changing scenario.
These days everyone seems to make fun of the VC10 and its reliability and its recent restriction on carrying non military passengers (the result of sheer bloody cowardice on the part of senior officers in the fallout from Haddon Cave). The result of years of neglect and the constant lowering of standards and experience among both aircrew and ground crew have taken an awful toll.
Nevertheless, in the days of the old Far East slips (which is what this thread is all about) and for many years after she truly was the Queen of the Skies and I am proud to have had the privilege of flying her for as long as I did.
Hankies away
Cheers
1106
PS somebody asked 'Where's Beagle'? Well, when all this was happening - at school I should think......
PPS mind you, I'm surprised he hasn't given us the benefit of his opinon anyway....
