Just received this by email from one of the original Air Nauru pilots. It's a bit cryptic but that is how it was received. He asked for it be posted on this thread.
Quote:
"I thought I would drop a note to contribute a little to this thread. Reading it brought back many memories.
We often think back to the time we have experiences and remember a company, airline or group and often think it is the same as we ourselves experienced. Unfortunately that is rarely the case as I respectfully point t out as best as my old brain can do.
Firstly though………what I write here is not conjecture. Believe me please it is fact….as I recall.
Firstly there was no such thing as Air Nauru with the Falcon. That was a pure charter run by Bizjet. Bob Atkinson was the Chief Pilot and I know that Don Pinkstone and Ralph Salmon were often the pilots that flew the charters. There was an Air Nauru sign stuck on the aircraft and it was removed once it returned from the trip from Melbourne to Nauru. The aircraft was the only one that was “gravel certified.
The first interviewees for crewing the ex MMA brand new F-28 were interviewed by the Honorary Consul Mr.Holmes, Ansett Execs Captains Lane and Winchcombe. They recruited two captains…the Chief Pilot Peter Lavender and Maurie Baston.
The Office was located on the corner of Swanson and Collins Street in the Bank of NSW building and later moved to Nauru House after it had been built.
The initial crews were Peter Lavender the Chief Pilot. Maurie Baston who was deputy chief pilot, Don Pinkstone, Ralph Salmon, Ted King as captains….FO’s Tony Allen, Martin Berle, Tom Simons and Doug Whitbourn. There was no admin assistant but one was recruited some years later.
Some items that may be of interest. For much of the area there were no maps available at the time so Ralph Salmon and Maurie Baston drew them from graph paper. No letdowns were published for Nauru and as we expanded to Majuro we produced letdowns from blanks sourced from the then Australian DCA.
Fleet expanded to two F-28’s and routes were added to places that some of us had never heard about. Nuie, Wallis, Christmas (Pacific), Manus, Yap, ........... towns named “Paris" and "London" in the Pacific etc.. It was a wonderful geography lesson.
The first Boeing was met by two F-28’s 20,000’ 100nm north and a formation welcome was flown. Ferry crew was Peter Lavender and Rick Fry who later became the CX boss. F28 Crews Spike Jones, Bill Thompson, Barry Tate, Tony Allen, Maurie Baston, Bruce Marquez.
All aircraft were gravel equipped and we flew into such places as Majuro - 5,400 coral. Truk, 5,000 Coral, Yap 4700 Coral, Ponape 5600ft coral..........from memory with routes expanding to Japan, Singapore, NZ etc.
The B-737 was certified with flexible tyre pressure. That was needed to operate into Suva. Land at Nadi. Let the tyres down to 75PSI. Fly to Suva and back to Nadi. Pump up the tyres
(145 PSI I think) and head north again.
A few scares. Runway light failure at Nauru in rain and poor viz. Battery operated portables deployed in time.
Push back at Noumea B727 nose steering gear pin inadvertently left out by towing crew . Major damage to nose gear trying to stop on Nauru. Aircraft stopped about 50 feet from the then 5,600 runway.
At Christmas Island (Pacific) Flight Engineer Jack Riley saved the day in getting a vehicle unloaded from the combi B-727 with no unloading gear. Jacked the vehicle up with fork lift and got the locals to push the aircraft sideways away from the raised vehicle in the freight area.
Inaugural service into Hong Kong - whole crew and VIPs under house arrest in Manila over three days due no military clearance under Martial Law. House arrest was in the Manila Hilton.
Snow removal gear in Kagoshima…a ships hawser see-sawed over the fuselage roof……and brooms on the wings.
Routes to Japan and Samoa etc. flown with basic nav aids only. Omega tried and later INS made it easy. With INS and Omega, found out that Nauru was not in the place published on the maps. Out by about 7 nms.
Two jet stream merging over Kagoshima produced a ground speed during six weeks in winter of about 650kts
Flight plans produced by hand and submitted for each sector by crew.
Such was the fun as the airline grew to nine aircraft and then the B 727s were sold …reduced to 4 B-737. CX requested referee comment for the FE’s and I think all or most were employed by CX.
Tried to get the AFAP to allow the FE’s to crew TAA aircraft but AFAP refused.
Many more stories but my typing is not good ……..just thought I would share a bit of the origins of Air Nauru." Unquote.