"Airline Pilot" film

[Slats One]

Tom Stoney at the helm

The training Capt in the Shannon sequences was Tom Stoney - ex RAF Bomber Command and BOAC Comet fleet. Wonderful chap so they say. In the LHR -SIN run film footage the SFO went on to be a well known name at BA 7474 fleet. Another good bloke.

Stunning film footage and the sounds of the Conways howling made me emotional.

Ah, wonderful years and I was a boy.

[PAXboy]

Just trying to imagine the cost of a machine off the line, + training crew + fuel + SNN costs for a WEEK???

[fireflybob]

Just trying to imagine the cost of a machine off the line, + training crew + fuel + SNN costs for a WEEK???

a) It was a State airline with UK Government adding huge amounts!

b) Fuel was cheap.

c) They believed in given pilots proper Terms and Conditions in those days.

[cardmaker]

Hamble Instructor

If anyone is interested, my father "Joe" Douglas was an instructor at Hamble from 1963 to 1974 and I have a photo of some of the instructors.

[Al R]

Periscope is a great resource, I could watch if for hours. And do.

Airline Pilot.

https://archive.org/details/40790HDAirlinePilotBOAC

[Chris Scott]

Originally Posted by PAXboy

Just trying to imagine the cost of a machine off the line, + training crew + fuel + SNN costs for a WEEK???

In case PAXboy is still interested in a response five years on (!), the fuel was somewhat cheaper in those days, and of course - to be tactful - money and profitability were not a critical problem for state-owned BOAC...

Captain Airclues succinctly describes (post #4, above) the background to the making of this historic documentary in 1968. It's not entirely surprising that Stephen Radcliffe, having come straight off the Piper Aztec (?) that Hamble was using for its Instrument Rating exercises in the late 1960s, would need about 40 landings on VC10 base-training before - as I understand it - starting route (line) training on revenue flights. The VC10 simulator at Cranebank was fine for instrument flying and systems training. But flying a visual approach and landing using the black hole-style visual display - for which a CCTV camera was being "flown" over a model of an aerodrome traffic zone - was something of a nightmare and certainly not representative of the delightful VC10.

In those days, as even today, it was uncommon for a cadet to come straight out of flying school and light twin-pistons into the right-hand seat of one of the largest long-haul jets. (IIRC, BEA were taking cadets with the same experience out of flying school on to the much "hotter", less-forgiving Trident.) The independents demanded much more flying experience, although they took pilots with a wide range of backgrounds and ages, and arguably with a less-rigorous selection procedure. The most experienced British independent in the late 1960s was BUA, which sponsored cadets to the AST flying school at Perth (Scone). (At the peak of its cadet requirements in the late 'Sixties, BEA/BOAC also had courses at Perth, as well as at Oxford.)

BUA cadets graduating with a basic CPL and IR at that time were invariably seconded to associate companies. The most common was BUAF on Bristol Freighters, but a few went to Mortons on Herons and Dakotas, and a handful to BUA(CI) or BUA(Manx) on Dart Heralds. Those fleets provided valuable handling and route experience for several years before a conversion to the BAC 1-11 with BUA itself. My own experience involved waiting over 3 years and over 2000 hours on Herons, Dakotas and Dart Heralds before an atypical conversion to P2 on the VC10. The conversion from the Herald to the VC10 included less than 10 hours and fewer than 20 landings. In 1971 Base training was still all done at Gatwick (imagine that today!), as we only had 4 a/c and the training had to be fitted into the aircraft plot for our passenger schedules. We did the medium and high-altitude work (stalls, Dutch rolls, etc.) over the west country.

[Jn14:6]

Hamble used the Piper Apache in those days, not Aztecs. Later replaced by the delightful Beech Baron.