Archive (237 life histories found)
'Once on landing in Dhahran Saudi customs found a girlie magazine left behind by one of the passengers. They went berserk threatened to jail the whole crew and impound the aircraft '
As with most Arab countries any goods from Israel or any companies with a suspected Jewish connection were prohibited. These ranged from Outspan oranges, Cadburys chocolate to Ford cars. The problem was no one knew what companies were on the black…
Tags: alcohol, Bahrain, girlie magazine, laws, religion
'...regardless of world disasters the first item had to be concerning the Sheik even if it was as mundane as his meeting the French ambassador '
As expats we enjoyed the good life in Bahrain. The weather was beautiful apart from a few months in winter when we got some thunderstorms, but they never lasted for long. In summer the temperature would rise up to fifty degrees C with very high…
Tags: Bahrain tv, heat
'...some of the other captains assured me that pilots were exempt from their religious duties when flying in the interests of safety'
At one stage I got involved in training some of the new young copilots. The majority were fine, dedicate to the job and eager to learn. But I came across one individual who was a devout Moslem. It was the time of Ramadan and all good Moslems were…
'Surely they could identify a civilian aircraft from a military threat '
While I was there the Iran - Iraq was on and we had some interesting flight restrictions. The US and other European countries sent in a fleet of warships to protect the oil tanker traffic from Kuwait through the Gulf of Hormuz. This gave rise to…
Tags: Gulf War, military threat, Navy
'Gulf Air pilots were very strict and operated strictly by the book. Observing this a friend of mine decided to have a bit of fun at their expense.'
Gulf Air had a fleet of Boeing 737's for short haul routes and for long haul Tristars. I had flown 737's before and was a bit taken aback when I first saw the Gulf Air Boeing 737 flight manual, for the first page was a disclaimer from Boeing for…
Tags: Bahrain, piloting, rules of Gulf Air
'Bahrain was ruled absolutely by Sheik Bin Al Khalifa, known to all affection ally as 'Jack '. His rule was law but benign'
I spent many happy and fruitful years working for Gulf Air, based in Bahrain. Bahrain is a small desert island just off the coast of Saudia Arabia to which it is now joined by a causeway. Bahrain was ruled absolutely by Sheik Bin Al Khalifa, known…
'We had one French pilot whom we christened 'Kermit''
We used nicknames a lot between ourselves to avoid being politically incorrect. The locals we refered to as ' men from Mullingar', and the hookers who infested the hotel bar we called 'nightfighters. ' One of our engineers was 'bungallow' as we…
Tags: nicknames, Nigeria, prostitute
'Even safely on the ground it was chaos and eventually the air traffic controller gave up and declared the airport closed '
During my time there the Government decided to build a new capital in the middle of the country. This was to be called Abuja, and was conceived to minimize the friction between the Muslim North and the Christian South. Billions were spent carving…
'We could hear some explosions and gunfire from the direction of the town, so needed no persuasion to stay put'
As fate would have it I just happened to be on station at Christmas 1984 when the Nigerian Army decided to stage a military coup against their corrupt politicians. Two of us went out to Kano airport to operate the early morning flight to Lagos. As…
Tags: army, coup, explosions, Nigeria
'It was many months later when the new timetable was eventually printed that we realized that we were supposed to operate the other way around - and no one had noticed '
It had been decided to base two of our aircraft at Kano, Northern Nigeria. This was a welcome break from Lagos. The weather in Kano was much more pleasant, it was dry and no humidity. We started the new morning schedule going clockwise Kano,…