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Also Akrotiri. Brit inbound from Masirah to BZN and similar outbound to Masirah.

Both sets of pax duly 're embarked and Brits all fired up ready to go.

Loadie to DAMO, "Where's my female pax ?"

would have loved to see everyone's faces when 8 hours later they arrive at their point of departure

Not me, but ....

PanAm Stratocruisers were all white but had a white tail fin with 2 horizontal blue stripes enclosing the log PanAm.

BOAC Stratoruisers were all white but had a blue tail fin with 2 horizontal white stripes enclosing the logo BOAC

One dark and dirty night, with the two companies' aircraft parked side by side at Idlewild (New York ) the BOAC Flight Engineer completed his outside checks, entered the cockpit and started on the panel check when .... the PanAm Flight Engineer entered the flight deck, flung his hat into the wardrobe and said .. "thanks, buddy, that's saved me getting wet, I'll take over now " !

Speedy, know of numerous instances where work has been carried out on a wrong aeroplane. Dark, cold and dismal night. Line of Vulcans - hauled Houchin and battery cart across, and hooked up. Ladders and scissor lift to get access to some outside panel. Connected Megger to test antenna isolation. Then discovered wrong bloody aeroplane. Been there done that. Sad init.

Or organised bunch of guys to play draughts with aircraft in hangar to get one out from the back, only to discover I would be taking a different one on an early morning jaunt the next day. Sorreeee!!.

Alison

I've told the story of the 'lost' Beverley at Dishforth; on 214 we had a case of too many Pax on a Hastings.

Coming home from our 1st trip to Karachi, when we had done the Valiant, none stop Marham to Singapore and back.

All the Karachi detachement got dysentry and we had a 2 nights stop in Aden. Our M.O. put 6 guys in SSQ there were they were supposed to stay until local medics allowed them out and get home as & when transport could be found.

They were on the Hastings for an 0 dark 30 take off and weren't noticed till the AQM did his head count, and no they didn't get off.
They had climbed out of SSQ windows and in true RAF tradition, 'escaped'.

I was in Crotone in Calabria in 1974, having just come to the end of a 3 month contract flying out to a gas exploration rig in the Ionian Sea. I was personal pilot to a UK property tycoon and he didn’t want to be seen in his helicopter during the fuel crisis in the UK so to save my job we managed to get this short term contract with Elitos Helicopters. Just me and my engineer but for the last month our wives flew out to join us.
The four of us set off very early from Crotone for home with the aim of reaching Milan Malpensa - where we were obliged to meet with our Italian sponsors - and then onwards to Nice for an overnight stop. We refuelled first in Naples, next stop Rome Ciampino for another refuel. There the bowser didn’t turn up so I set off to find what had happened to it. No such thing as handling agents for our little craft.

Unbeknown to me our two wives decided to wander into the terminal to find the toilets whilst my engineer did a turnaround check. With the language confusion I still don’t really know what the wives did to warrant it – nor did they - but they got themselves detained and they disappeared into the bowels of the terminal. It was almost two hours later that I found them in Police custody.

After much pleading we were allowed on our way via yet another refuel at Bologna to Milan but the delay meant we were pushing the boundaries of night from Milan to Nice which was not in the plan as bits of kit had gone u/s during the contract and we had to maintain VFR. On that sector we got caught out with low cloud surrounding us quite suddenly in the mountains north of Savona and I had to climb on top and divert IFR to Genoa………but the diversion there is a story for another time and another thread.

CharlieOneSix wrote: ↑

Sun Apr 15, 2018 11:36 am

Unbeknown to me our two wives decided to wander into the terminal to find the toilets whilst my engineer did a turnaround check.

Needing a Loo can be a problem.

I once had a problem at an airport where the departure lounge was 'Looless', and we were held from boarding for a significant period.
Racking my brains, it might have been Milano Linate. Most bad things happened there.

I think it was Linate where Alitalia flights from Roma to FFaM used to land, pax disembarked and did a head-count and then "force" everyone to shop in the Italian duty-free. One of my colleagues was arrested there for opening the wrong door and stepping into somewhere verboten, having left his passport back in the DC-1O with the green and red stripes. Took hours to find him and get him back on board.

Once had a US exchange officer VC10 capt flew down to Yemen as pax in a C130 via AKT to be told the slip pattern had changed and to get back on the thing and return to BZN. Really nice guy, felt sorry for him. I refused to get on those things. Not officer's transport.

15 hours in the back of a Herc Honington-Cold Lake for Maple Flag with knees up against a Houchin or something was definitely NOT fun and very unofficer-like

I am not going to win any brownie points with Ex-Ascot but, some twenty years ago, within 24 months I flew twice on a British Charter airline with a name starting with an "M" on two of their 757s and on local AF's C-130H. The Hercules were far more comfortable.