BKS Readers Stories
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My name is Eric Driver and I worked with Ray
Corsan at LHR for a couple of years, having had a previous couple of years
with Starways Ltd. Ray’s
grey cells are probably the same as mine but there was one occasion that
Ray and I shared which had its “interesting” aspects.
We had decided to take a holiday in Italy (Rimini to be precise)
using our staff travel privileges. But
to get there we had to leave LHR one Saturday morning to go up to
Newcastle in order to catch the NCL-BSL flight (from where we would take a
train to Rimini). Well we had a good flight up and all was going well on
the way from NCL when, halfway down the country we were hit by lightning
with a hell of a bang! Luckily Ray had his seatbelt done up as he was
asleep at the time and nearly shot through the roof. It was then
discovered that the compass had been affected, so there was no choice but
to land at LHR to seek a replacement.
Naturally the LHR staff had disappeared for the day and so Ray and
I found ourselves working on the first day of our holiday! Yes, there was
a spare aircraft with a working compass –the trouble being that our only
engineer was away on another flight and not due back until much later in
the day. On his eventual
return the compasses were duly changed and our flight eventually took off
for BSL quite a few hours later. The
adventures didn’t finish there, but as they weren’t related to BKS, I
won’t bore you with them –but Ray may have had memory jogged………. I later left to go to South Africa (TREK Airways and a Travel Agent) before eventually settling in New Zealand where I ended up heading its DCS department for some 30 odd years, participating in a variety of IATA and international forums. BKS (and Starways) were certainly a good training ground for my future. I, too, would be more than happy to hear from any of the old hands, wherever they may be. The home email is Eric-Red.Hedley@xtra.co.nz |