Have not seen fag ash on the floor of a North sea helicopter for 20 years. I remember Bonds chief pilot pulling the ashtrays out of any 105 he flew in prior to launching them into the farmers field at Strubby As to eating in the cockpit today just look under the crew seats. You could grow spuds under some of them.
Now and then a pilot complains. More than happy to show him where we keep the vacuum cleaner.

For 139 pilots the MCDU screens are not sealed and therefore make poor stands for coffee cups. Spill anything there and it rapidly goes into the expensive bits.

I retired from Bristows twenty years ago. With me went the best airfield homing aid--a trail of dog ends leading to the runway.

You had some fierce competition.....I recall a couple of old timers that set the standard.

One, who always wore the same dark blue suit, maintained an appearance that looked like he used his suit coat front for an ash tray.....and the other from Down Under could maintain an ash on his fag that completely defied gravity and the inability of the Engineers to track rotors.

EATING EN ROUTE
 

I'm surprised to hear it's considered to be a problem, it certainly wasn't in my day, 1975-1999. Whether it was five hour plus flights in the Chinook or shuttling around the Leman/Indie in 61's or 76's, a good scran was always high on the priority list. The Magnus used to do a smashing fried breakfast and we had one co-pilot who could finish his by the top of the climb on the way home.

So true Shag!

There was a major upset on the S76A when they introduced the second dinghy. It was installed against the captains door and it blocked the car type ash tray assembly that was built in. I had to go to Halfords and buy a stick on car ash tray to keep me going.

I was bringing a S76A GBJVZ from Antwerp to Redhill. It was a very early S76 with a small centre consol and old fashioned instruments and OBS which didn't work. As the weather was a bit iffy I flew back in formation with Avgas who was flying the other fully equipped one.

The normal place where I put my fags and lighter was not available to I tucked them against a ledge which had a blanking plate for the Loran or something. All went well until it was time to light up and my lighter wasn't there. Fingers found a big gap under the blanking plate which my lighter had dived in to.

We had a little screwdriver gismo around our necks to undo the Zeus fasteners on the cowling so I eased out of the formation a bit and removed the plate. There was my lighter nestled amongst all the cockpit's electronics' wiring.

I recovered it and at that point my maps migrated off the left hand seat down onto the floor by the collective. I needed my maps in case we got separated so I eased out to about four spans and did the old Bristol Sycamore trick when changing pilots.

I unstrapped, eased myself up and sat on the centre consol. swung my legs into the port footwell and pushed myself over into the left seat. I recovered my maps and reversed the procedure to get back again.

The aircraft did exactly what it was told; kept perfect formation.

Coming into Gatwick it was an ILS and my kit didn't work. I cleared it with ATC so I did a formation ILS (1/2 span) on Avgas and we broke cloud at about 600ft.

It took me back to my stovie days when we did formation GCAs on Bingo fuel.

Odd how your formation flying skills pick up at those kinds of times.....along with some severe muscle strain in the vicinity of your nether regions.

That ended up being my favourite S-76, it was the original North Denes aircraft, light and still had fuel pressure gauges for years!

The only one with four proper doors.