Hanslope
12th Oct 2013, 11:55
Recent threads about BA Long hauls took me back down memory lane, I don’t often post on Pprune but here goes, I hope it’s of some amusement.
This story goes back to 20th October 1975, when I was working in BA central marketing at West London Air Terminal, Cromwell Road, now Sainsbury’s. I had always been interested in Flying Boats and had read of Antilles Air Boats in the Caribbean, and their network of scheduled services in the Virgin Islands. This story is about a trip to see the operation and hopefully get a flight!
At the time I worked in the timetables department so it was easy to get hold of the schedules and plan the itinerary. The plan was to take the first BA New York flight of the day from LHR, and then make my way down to San Juan and out to the islands on Eastern Airlines using a free pass I had applied for.
The outbound journey involved a connection in JFK on to the Eastern San Juan flight, so all depended on me getting a space available/subload seat on BA501 LHRJFK at 1100.
Now at the time, an ex girlfriend of mine was working in check in Terminal 3, so it was handy to have a quiet word with her to find out the chances before I braved Staff Check in in the Ground Floor T3 South Wing. According to her, the flight was well over booked, and she reckoned the only way I would stand an earthly would be if I could get a jumpseat approved.
With the confidence and brazen cheek of youth, aided by a desire to not look like a wimp to my ex, I made my way to the Ops/Crew Control office upstairs. “Sorry to bother you but could I please speak to the Captain on the 501”, I squeaked, half imagining that some James Robertson Justice type would arrive and blast me across the room. Captain Heywood duly appeared and seemed most approachable. I explained what I was doing and that I was desperate to get on his flight that morning and would it be at all possible to have a jump seat? No problem says he, “just give me your full name and when you check in downstairs tell them I have approved the jumpseat for you”.
Armed with this great news, I walked on air down to Staff Travel. “You’ll be lucky”, they said. “We have over 60 staff on the standby list already, and many have higher seniority than you”
At close out, an announcement was made to the effect that the flight was now full, and only one staff was accepted, yours truly.
I made my way to the gate, clutching my precious boarding card, with parallel lines across it and the mysterious “J/S “written in felt tip.
At the 747 aircraft door of G-AWND, I was greeted by the CSD, and waited to be shown the cabin crew fold down seat way in the back of the aircraft that I expected. Instead I was duly escorted up the spiral staircase to the flight deck, this is where my seat was to be, just behind the captain on the left side.
Captain Heywood introduced me to the other two crew members and made me feel so at home, I couldn’t quite believe this was happening to me. “Now I can understand that you will want to see the take-off and the landing, and that’s fine, but to be honest the 6 or so hours in between can be pretty boring, so by all means go back into the lounge whenever you want, have a meal, just relax and feel free to come and go as you wish”
And so it was that after the take-off I moved back into the lounge and did relax, sat back in one of the armchairs and felt like a million dollars. I popped in and out of the flight deck a few times just checking on the progress of the flight, and about 3 hrs. into the flight, one of the passengers started a conversation. He had noticed me going in and out of the flight deck and wanted to know how come I was allowed to do this. Now as airline staff, we were always told on pain of death never to admit to fellow passengers that we were staff travelling on free or reduced rate tickets, this was a very sensitive issue in view of the then very high air fares etc. So what to do, what to say?
Quick thinking, I said that I was a journalist, and writing a story about flying in Jumbo jets, and had a special dispensation to visit the flight deck.
What a coincidence, said my companion, I’m a writer as well, how nice to talk to you, who do you write for?
After a few more minutes of me digging myself deeper and deeper, I pleaded tiredness and said I was going to have a nap to escape. I closed my eyes for what seemed like hours, then opened them. “You didn’t sleep long?”
By this time, thankfully, we were close to descent so I excused myself and went back to the Flightdeck for the landing.
As we descended, I knew enough about the dials in front of me to see the altimeter winding down. Outside, nothing to be seen but thick claggy cloud. All seemed calm and ordered with the crew, so I tried to stay relaxed. The altimeter was nudging 1000 feet now and still nothing visible. Then suddenly a line of strobe lights appeared in the murk, leading away from us, and then, as if by magic, the JFK runway appeared right ahead. My first ever cockpit landing, what a thrill.
The full trip turned out to be a great success, and I got my first ever flying boat rides.
As I said, I hope this is of interest and you enjoy my tale.
This story goes back to 20th October 1975, when I was working in BA central marketing at West London Air Terminal, Cromwell Road, now Sainsbury’s. I had always been interested in Flying Boats and had read of Antilles Air Boats in the Caribbean, and their network of scheduled services in the Virgin Islands. This story is about a trip to see the operation and hopefully get a flight!
At the time I worked in the timetables department so it was easy to get hold of the schedules and plan the itinerary. The plan was to take the first BA New York flight of the day from LHR, and then make my way down to San Juan and out to the islands on Eastern Airlines using a free pass I had applied for.
The outbound journey involved a connection in JFK on to the Eastern San Juan flight, so all depended on me getting a space available/subload seat on BA501 LHRJFK at 1100.
Now at the time, an ex girlfriend of mine was working in check in Terminal 3, so it was handy to have a quiet word with her to find out the chances before I braved Staff Check in in the Ground Floor T3 South Wing. According to her, the flight was well over booked, and she reckoned the only way I would stand an earthly would be if I could get a jumpseat approved.
With the confidence and brazen cheek of youth, aided by a desire to not look like a wimp to my ex, I made my way to the Ops/Crew Control office upstairs. “Sorry to bother you but could I please speak to the Captain on the 501”, I squeaked, half imagining that some James Robertson Justice type would arrive and blast me across the room. Captain Heywood duly appeared and seemed most approachable. I explained what I was doing and that I was desperate to get on his flight that morning and would it be at all possible to have a jump seat? No problem says he, “just give me your full name and when you check in downstairs tell them I have approved the jumpseat for you”.
Armed with this great news, I walked on air down to Staff Travel. “You’ll be lucky”, they said. “We have over 60 staff on the standby list already, and many have higher seniority than you”
At close out, an announcement was made to the effect that the flight was now full, and only one staff was accepted, yours truly.
I made my way to the gate, clutching my precious boarding card, with parallel lines across it and the mysterious “J/S “written in felt tip.
At the 747 aircraft door of G-AWND, I was greeted by the CSD, and waited to be shown the cabin crew fold down seat way in the back of the aircraft that I expected. Instead I was duly escorted up the spiral staircase to the flight deck, this is where my seat was to be, just behind the captain on the left side.
Captain Heywood introduced me to the other two crew members and made me feel so at home, I couldn’t quite believe this was happening to me. “Now I can understand that you will want to see the take-off and the landing, and that’s fine, but to be honest the 6 or so hours in between can be pretty boring, so by all means go back into the lounge whenever you want, have a meal, just relax and feel free to come and go as you wish”
And so it was that after the take-off I moved back into the lounge and did relax, sat back in one of the armchairs and felt like a million dollars. I popped in and out of the flight deck a few times just checking on the progress of the flight, and about 3 hrs. into the flight, one of the passengers started a conversation. He had noticed me going in and out of the flight deck and wanted to know how come I was allowed to do this. Now as airline staff, we were always told on pain of death never to admit to fellow passengers that we were staff travelling on free or reduced rate tickets, this was a very sensitive issue in view of the then very high air fares etc. So what to do, what to say?
Quick thinking, I said that I was a journalist, and writing a story about flying in Jumbo jets, and had a special dispensation to visit the flight deck.
What a coincidence, said my companion, I’m a writer as well, how nice to talk to you, who do you write for?
After a few more minutes of me digging myself deeper and deeper, I pleaded tiredness and said I was going to have a nap to escape. I closed my eyes for what seemed like hours, then opened them. “You didn’t sleep long?”
By this time, thankfully, we were close to descent so I excused myself and went back to the Flightdeck for the landing.
As we descended, I knew enough about the dials in front of me to see the altimeter winding down. Outside, nothing to be seen but thick claggy cloud. All seemed calm and ordered with the crew, so I tried to stay relaxed. The altimeter was nudging 1000 feet now and still nothing visible. Then suddenly a line of strobe lights appeared in the murk, leading away from us, and then, as if by magic, the JFK runway appeared right ahead. My first ever cockpit landing, what a thrill.
The full trip turned out to be a great success, and I got my first ever flying boat rides.
As I said, I hope this is of interest and you enjoy my tale.