Quote from post#134
"The first royal flight by an RAF VC10 was the journey to Australia and back by the Prince of Wales, Harold Wilson and Ted Heath in 1967 for the memorial service for the Australian premier Harold Holt, who drowned while swimming.
The flight from London to Melbourne took 21 hours, 46 minutes including two stops at Muharraq in Bahrain and Gan in the Indian Ocean. Civil aircraft took 36 hours at that time to complete the journey." Unquote
As I posted in #3 in this thread...this is the flight I was the F/E crew from Gan to Melbourne and vv...... but it doesn't mention that we stopped in Perth, for a couple of hours, on the way back. This was simply to introduce Prince Charles to Western Australians.
Harold Wilson was outraged as he was being upstaged...I heard him mutter obscenities whilst we waited for the Prince to return.
Later, during flight, my Captain sent an invite to the Prime Minister to visit the cockpit. His response was.....you look after the A/C and I'll look after Great Britain!
At one point I had to descend thru' the galley hatch to the electronic bay for something. He glowered at me and said "What's wrong!" I said I reset a computer module...I wish I'd said "I'll look after the A/C, which is doing well and you look after the country...which isn't!" but at that time...I thought I had a career...
