STILL IMPROVING CHAPTER 8

In 1988, the narrator left British Airways and joined British Air Tours. He was still on the British Airways seniority list, allowing him to switch between the two companies. He proposed to Liz and they began planning their wedding. The narrator was flying the Cessna Conquest and the 747 and had to remember which aircraft he was in when landing. They moved into their first home together and Liz was still flying for British Caledonian. They found out they were expecting their first son, James. The narrator started a new job at Gatwick Airport and had a more convenient commute. He had a humorous encounter with Air Traffic Control, mistaking his call sign. Liz had to stop flying due to pregnancy. The narrator had a positive experience with the crew at Gatwick, unlike his experiences at Heathrow. He learned the importance of bonding with the crew and having a happy crew resulting in happy passengers. The crew enjoyed some rum punch on their arrival in Barbados. CHAPTER VIII A VERY WELCOME RETURN TO GATWICK The year now was 1988. There are years in all of our lives that, in retrospect, turn out to be far more significant than we realise at the time. For me 1988 was that year. On a whim I had left British Airways and now joined British Air Tours. Unbeknownst and very luckily for me the two companies shared a joint seniority list, so in effect I was still on the British Airways master list. This meant that I could move between the two companies and still retain that all-important seniority number. On the domestic front I had asked Liz to marry me at Christmas. Surprisingly she agreed. As soon as the festivities were over we began making arrangements for the upcoming wedding in May. I was still heavily involved in the Cessna Conquest operation at Shoreham. I spent a lot of my spare time flying for food brokers in Desmond Cracknell. Now that I was happily flying the 747 I could relax and really enjoy the luxury of flying both aircraft types. The main problem was remembering which aircraft I was in when I began to flare for the landing. Trying to flare the Cessna at 70 feet or the Jumbo at 10 feet would both result in a dramatic outcome. We had also moved into our first home together. As always with a new house there was a lot of work to be done. Liz was still flying long haul for British Caledonian on the DC-10 and the 747. All in all we both had our hands very full. There was precious little time to spare for either of us to be together. And that's when we found out that our first son, James, had decided to book an appearance for later that year. Liz was pregnant. We were delighted and, to be honest, a little daunted at this news. We were both so busy that the little time we had together was spent with Roffy or visiting family and friends. How could we possibly have time to look after a baby? Still, it was a bit late for that now. James was on his way. Plans for the wedding intensified. I was about to start my new job with British Air Tours and life was running at full throttle. I would often return from a trip and drive down to Shoreham Airport to fly up the Footbrokers aircraft the next day. When we spoke to Air Traffic Control our standard call sign was FOOD 125. I totally embarrassed myself one winter's evening returning to Gatwick on the Conquest. It had been a long day visiting a major client, Baxter Soup, up in Inverness in Scotland. It was too late to land back at Shoreham by the time we set southwards for the return flight, as they closed at eight. On the approach to Gatwick, struggling to stay awake, I called up the Approach Controller with a call SPEEDBIRD 125. All British Airways aircraft have the call sign SPEEDBIRD, followed by the flight number. The poor Controller was expecting a light twin, not a British Airways scheduled flight. Twice he asked me to confirm who exactly I was. I could not understand why he was asking, until I actually got it right on the third request. It was a quiet time of night, and luckily he saw the funny side of my mistake. Had I done that on approach into New York I would have very quickly found myself with a fly to escort. I realise that I am biased, but British Air Traffic Controllers are simply the best in the world. I wish the same thing could be said of some of its pilots. Part of the advantage of flying is that you cannot do it if you are pregnant. That meant that Liz now had to stop flying for the following year. Happily we were now both able to see each other much more. Before her pregnancy we were much like ships in the night. I could be returning from a five-day trip the same day that Liz was leaving for a seven-day one. We could go for weeks without seeing each other. Now at least one of us could start to live a more normal life. The one thing we were both determined about was that the new arrival would have to fit into our lifestyle and not vice-versa. James would have to adapt quickly, and it is fair to say that he more than lived up to his side of the bargain. Not many babies make headlines and news, as James was destined to do. The day arrived my first flight from Gatwick. To say I was a little nervous would be an understatement. I was going to be a father. I now had real responsibilities. No longer could I choose to leave an airline on a whim. I needed to grow up quickly. Therefore I had to make this job work. No excuses, no blaming anybody else, whatever the circumstances, I had to commit to this new position. The first advantage of working from Gatwick was my commute was reduced from two or sometimes three hours to a mere twenty minutes. More would I have to worry about the queues on the M-25 motorway. The only traffic I now had to worry about were a few farm tractors that sometimes trundled along the narrow country lanes. The car-park at Gatwick was next to my old office in the Beehive, so I could now pop up on the way to work or home. So far so good. It only remained to find out if the captains at Gatwick would actually speak to me. The bus from the car-park to the operations building took five minutes. Instead of a stony silence there was a welcome sound of happy voices and laughter. People even said hello to me. Well, this was a definite change for the better, I thought to myself. For arrival at the terminal building I made my way to the check-in counter, where I was warmly greeted and welcomed by the operational staff. On enquiring where I should meet the captain and the flight engineer, I was told they would find me soon enough. I then asked if there was a windless room where I could sit in silence and await my fate. As were the majority of my jokes, this attempt at humour was met by a blank stare. Things were obviously done very differently here, and it was very much to my liking so far. As I could find neither the captain nor the engineer, I thought I would get ahead of the game and go in search of the paperwork for the flight. Due to false starts, I managed to get all the required documents, and I spread them across the counter for the captain to peruse when he arrived. I thought I would go a step further, and so I produced my yellow marker-pen and began highlighting all the relevant information. That completed, I again looked round to find where my colleagues were. Still, there was no sign of anyone, and so I carried on and thoroughly checked the flight-plan and all the weather en route. I even made sure that the map was the correct way up this time. Everything seemed to be in order, and it looked like it would be a smooth flight all the way to Barbados. I was still standing there alone. The report-time had long since come and gone. Finally I began to wonder if it was me. Had I arrived a day too early or a day too late? I could no longer simply stand there, and so I set off in search of my crew. Returning to the ops-desk, I thought I'd better meet the cabin crew and let them know that there would be a delay as I was the only flight crew member who had arrived. I was given a room number where our crew were meeting. Wandering down very unfamiliar corridors, I eventually found the correct room. I gently knocked and entered. At Heathrow we only met the cabin crew when we were eventually on the aircraft, so on board the captain would proceed with a formal briefing, occasionally asking a technical question, resulting in that crew member being offloaded if they answered incorrectly. Therefore the atmosphere was always formal and slightly threatening—not a pleasant experience or a good way to start a trip. This was probably one of the reasons there was such a vast divide between flight and cabin crew at Heathrow. As I entered the room at Gatwick, I was expecting a similar bleak reception to the one I was used to at Heathrow. Instead, as I entered, all faces turned towards me with welcoming smiles and greetings. There was laughter reverberating around the room, and searching for the source I saw the captain doing a pretty decent impersonation of a well-known celebrity, aptly supported by the flight engineer. Well, this was undoubtedly a very different way to brief the cabin crew. There were no tricky questions, no formal briefing, and most importantly no divide between flight and cabin crew. Not quite knowing what to do or say, I meekly offered the captain the paperwork for the flight. Wiping tears of laughter from his eyes, he asked if I was happy with everything and did we need any extra fuel. Again this was a very different way of doing things than they were done at Heathrow. Assuring them I could see no reason for more fuel, he simply handed back the paperwork. He asked me to order whatever fuel I thought was reasonable, and with that he continued with another impersonation. Returning to the ops desk, I ordered the fuel, feeling slightly uneasy that I was the only one who had checked the figures. I felt a whole lot better when the operations officer winked at me and said the captain had checked all the paperwork an hour ago. Apparently he always arrived early to make time to get to know the rest of the crew. It was a lesson well learnt, and a practice I regularly use from that day onwards. One of the beautiful things about aviation is that there is something always new to discover on every flight. The day you stop learning is the day you retire. Over the coming years I learnt so much from the captains I flew with. I knew not how to treat people if they want the best out of them. Equally, like today, I learnt how to get the best out of a crew. The rest of that trip was much the same. Everybody had already bonded before we'd even reached the aircraft. Another lesson learnt that day. A happy crew nearly always results in happy passengers. Arrival into Barbados, the whole crew piled into a rickety old bus which banged and clattered its way around the narrow, uneven roads. The moment we left the airport behind, bottles of rum-punch miraculously appeared, and glasses of this very potent brew were passed around at great speed. There were no barriers between cabin and flight crew. We were simply crew. Arriving at the hotel, we unloaded ourselves to check in at the thatched cottage in the hotel grounds. From there golf-buggies were lined up to take us to our rooms, or, more accurately, cottages. There was bad news. Our rooms would not be ready for another two hours. It had been a long day, and we were all really tired. Quite a few of the crew had already had a couple of rum-punches too many. The hotel staff knew how to appease a tired team. More rum-punches were placed in front of us. Knowing it would be rude to refuse, we sat drinking for another two hours. Eventually our rooms were declared ready. This was just as well as now, really late at night. The captain, the engineer and I poured ourselves into one of the buggies, to be whisked away to our cottages. Personally I was feeling more than a little worse for wear. I have never been a spirit drinker. I prefer beer and wine. The rum had definitely gone to my head, and I was a little unsteady on my feet as I climbed the steps to my room. Our three little cottages were next to each other, pulled out of drunken g'dight as I struggled to open my door. Whichever way I tried to fit my key into the lock I had absolutely no success opening the damn thing. In my inebriated state I thought the best thing to do would be sit down and work out why my key would not fit the lock. I woke up some hours later as a bright Caribbean sun rose above the trees behind me. It took me a few moments to realise where I was. I was highly embarrassed and prayed that the other two would not see me fall asleep in front of my room door. I stood up only to notice two feet sticking out from a bush next to me. I hurriedly made my way over to check on the well-being of the owner of these feet. There, in the bush, snoring loudly, was a flight engineer. It appeared that the task of gaining access to his room had also proved beyond him. If the captain saw either of us in this state there could be trouble ahead. As I turned round to ensure his door was closed I noticed an arm apparently attached to his door. On closer inspection this arm belonged to our captain. The rest of him lay in an untidy heap at the bottom of the door. Fortunately for me it appeared that I was the least affected by last night's rum-punches. Eventually all three of us were awake. Again we tried to open our doors without success. We began the steep ascent back towards the reception hut. Each step painfully reminded me of just how delicate my state was. Finally we staggered into the reception. We must have looked a real sight. People just stopped and stared at us. Thank goodness we'd had the foresight the previous evening to change into shorts and T-shirt. It transpired that we'd been given the wrong keys. It was a ten-minute walk up very steep steps to reception. We knew how difficult this was. We had little chance of making it back to the reception hut without serious injury if we attempted this in the dark. Our drunken fates had been sealed the moment that golf buggy drove off last night. This was a typical Gatwick trip. I knew I would be happy at my new base and my new airline, British Air Tours. Finally I felt at home.