After being accepted as a Hamble Cadet for British Airways in 1976 I am now in British Airways, but with only 7 years seniority! So what happened? The oil crisis of the mid 70s took away my place at Hamble and I decided to go to University courtesy of a Royal Air Force Cadetship scheme. Part of the pay back for this good deal was for me to join the RAF – a fine time was had spanning 20 years in total. My forte was in maritime aviation, many years spent patrolling the oceans of the world in the Nimrod, assisting Thatcher and Reagan winning the Cold War and included a quick venture into the South Atlantic in 1982 as part of the repatriation of the Argentineans to their own country. In 1987 the powers that were decided to send me on an exchange tour with the US Navy on the P3C Orion; regretfully United States security prevented me having to spend 6 months tours away from home in far off exotic places like Iceland in winter (as my US colleagues had to) – rather I had to remain on the Training Squadron in Florida tending to my pool and making regular visits to Mickey Mouse. Still 700 flying hours in just over 3 years kept me fairly busy! (Or was it a dream).

Returning to the UK in 1990 I went to the Royal Navy on exchange attempting to pass to the Dark Blue the complexities of fixed wing maritime aviation – or at least getting them to kindly point their guns and missiles in a direction other than the one the RAF were in. Eventually I had to go back to my own kind and duly returned to Kinloss in the early 90s before my tour as a flight commander on the Nimrod OCU was cut short for my next exciting venture, this time to MOD in Whitehall. Oh well, all good things have to come to an end! My 2 years in the MOD as part of the team in Operational Requirements to facilitate the Nimrod replacement (that was in 1996 and it still isn’t in Operational service), came to an end when I left the service to join the commercial aviation world.

I elected to join CityFlyer Express (CFE) over a number of other alternatives and regretted it not one bit. As the Chairman of the Flight Crew Committee and subsequently the BALPA Company Council Chairman I tried to learn how the civil aviation world ticks. A venture into management, primarily to do with Flight Safety, allowed me to see it from a different perspective. CFE was a fine company – doing well and of course its success at Gatwick presented British Airways with something of a dilemma – buy it or see it bought by the competition. We all know what happened and in a nutshell that is how I came back into British Airways.

After 11 years of nearly continuous IPA membership (I strayed for a short period to the other lot but couldn’t afford the fees) and a variety of different and extensive aviation experience, I feel its time to put something back .