First Commercial Flight

[Guest Howard Hughes]

I'd be interested to know, what were peoples first Commercial (paid) flights? Can you still remember? I guess it's a bit like the first solo!

 

Mine was a scenic charter from Alice Springs, West along the MacDonnell ranges, Gosses Bluff, Kings Canyon, Olga's and Uluru scenic with a landing at YAYE. After lunch returning directly to Alice Springs. All up about 3.5 hours.

 

How about you?

 

 

[Head in the clouds]

How could I forget! Getting started in commercial helicopters was a tough world at the time when I did it, the turbine jobs were full of 'Nam vets and the piston jobs were full of rich kids mainly sponsored by Daddy and happily working for no pay. I finally got a billet on a remote cattle station with a basta... (er, I mean a hell of a nice bloke) who liked to get his pound of flesh complete with blood and you were lucky if you only worked ten hours a day in the yards or making fences or putting in water pipes in return for a meal of fly ridden wild bull which was so badly killed and butchered that it was even too tough to chew when minced! Oh, and the odd couple of hours of heli time here and there, ...and we'll not go into the maintenance issues.

 

Loved it, every minute.... but was very glad to start my own operation the next year.

 

 

[djpacro]

I got my CPL late in life and soon after moved to the USA as VP Engineering, managing to include flying in my job. So, the first flying job I was paid for was delivery of a new Pitts S-2B from Afton, Wyoming across the Rockies to Dallas for a customer.

 

 

[frank marriott]

Pick up from cattle property. VFR on top over the ranges then drop through hole and locate destination on WAC (before GPS was invented)

 

 

[Guest Howard Hughes]

When I flew charter I never had a GPS, but funnily enough never had any trouble finding anywhere. I laugh when I see (usually private) aircraft with a fixed GPS, portable GPS and Ipad, 'just in case'! As far as gadgets go, I'd much rather have a TCAS!

 

 

[Head in the clouds]

...... I laugh when I see (usually private) aircraft with a fixed GPS, portable GPS ......

Reminds me of a very likeable chap who was heli mustering in the same era as me. No-one ever knew how he passed his flight test because he just couldn't navigate procedurally and was always getting lost. Then personal GPS came out and he was the first to have one and it seemed his dramas were over. But of course there weren't many satellites at that stage and it wasn't long before he was on his way out to (or back from) a job and the satellite reception dropped out and he was even more lost than before because he hadn't paid any attention to the charts at all now that he had a GPS.

 

Poor fella, he went out and bought a second GPS as a back-up on the premise that twin engines never both fail at the same time, not realising they'd both drop out together when the satellites did their thing....

 

 

[JOHN DARCY WILLIAMS]

His name was Mick Carratti. He owned and operated earth-moving machinery all over WA. He hated flying, but having acquired ( err . . kicked the insolvent owner off) a farm at Yuma, inland from Geralton, one that had a clapped out C182 in the shed, decided to use it for the business. VH-TSH (how can you ever forget your phonenumber when only knee high, or the rego of the family car?) flown for Carratti first off by one Bill Anguin. One day the hard living, hard drinking Bill had a little 'hearty' . Hence that first magical vacancy so ready to be filled by a novice eastern stater who'd never done a X/C beyond a slice of New South contained by Canberra Wagga and Coota.

 

No interview just Mick on the blower . . "Ah . . listen son, you be ready at Guildford (Perth Airport, just down the road from Caratti's plant) at daylight see. My mechanic's got the day's work written out on a sheet of paper. Take him up to Meeka with his tools. Then to King Bay (Dampier). Go to Hedland for the night. Our man there will tell you where to go next day. Pay's 20 pound a week and if you don't like that then there's every day eager boys on to me for a job who'll do it for less, even. Goodnight." Luigi's tools weighed more than an empty 182, or nearly.

 

And so it went on for a whole year. Hair breadth 'scapes into marginal paddocks or dirt roads anywhere between Kununurra and Esperance.. Characters every day you could base a Joseph Conrad or Hemingway type novel on. But the most outstanding character who had an early impact in shaping a young student pilot's approach to life and the game was

 

a returned Second World War veteran, Frederick Christopher Braund, rest his restless soul.

 

Chris went to Tocumwal in 1956 with 300 pounds in his pocket and did a deal with a sergeant there who was in charge of the hundreds of planes being cut up.

 

Ever disregarding of rules and protocol, once the deal had been transacted,

 

Chris checked the Mustang he'd just bought over, hopped in and flew away. He did not elaborate as to where he initially flew to and parked his new acquisition before getting the necessary approvals to register her. Suffice to say she went

 

on the register with his initials VH-FCB. He eventually sold FCB to an

 

RAAF Korean war vet, Jack McDonald. Chris told the story of how not long after that sale he was waiting at Orange in the East-West Airlines F27 he was flying when Jack landed in the Mustang and pulled up nearby. Chris went over to say

 

g'day and asked Jack if he could have one last quick circuit. Jack acquiesced,

 

so Chris hopped in and did just that, to the amusement of the airline agent and the passengers waiting to board the Friendship.

 

That very same Mustang was in a mid-air at an airshow in England a couple of years ago. The owner/pilot bailed out at low level and survived.

 

As a youngster, growing up in Canberra, I developed, like so many others, a passion for all things aeronautical. Whenever one of dad’s friends was around, talking about air force exploits or describing seeing some famous arrival from overseas, such as Charles Kingsford Smith, I hung on every word. My bicycle was only useful to get out to the airport where I found wonderful work cleaning the oily bellies of aero club planes in return for credit towards the day when I could start taking flying lessons. Sometimes, when I wagged school, I’d score a trip down to Bankstown or over to some NSW country town such as Cootamundra, the pilot often passing the controls over for a while. Magic!

 

Once a year the aero club hosted an airshow. The one staged in April 1959 particularly stands out. The first visiting plane to come in was a gleaming former RAAF fighter, the Mustang, privately owned by a certain airline pilot from Tamworth. He emerged from the cockpit, a tall, lean bloke, more like James Stewart than James Stewart. His routine for the show, to the crowd’s delight, was a series of loops and rolls performed with consummate smoothness and grace.. Little could I know then that I’d get to know this man rather well. Our friendship lasted 32 years, until his death in 1998.

 

Chris, native of Griffith, NSW, left school early and went down to the Hawkesbury Agricultural College. But he had little heart for farming. It was flying and the draw of Mascot that proved irresistible. When war broke out he enlisted in the RAAF, learned to fly and served in North Africa and the Pacific. After the war he flew DC3s and Fokker Friendships on airline services, also doing a stint in Tasmania cloud-seeding. Despite the passage of years and the passing of Chris, whenever certain fliers from the fifties and sixties gather today, more often than not Chris’s name comes up and folk fall about recalling the peculiarly lateral humour that sustained Chris and amused others all his flying life.

 

There was a radio jingle for a brand of flour that went “Sydney Flour is our flour. We use it every day. For scones and cakes that mother bakes, we say it is OKAY.” Well Chris had his version which he’d sing on first contact with Sydney Tower on his way in from Tamworth of a morning. “Sydney Tower is our tower, we call you every day. This is Echo Whisky Alpha, over Broken Bay.” And he’d get away with it, time after time. When on final approach to Mascot one day and waiting for a landing clearance the tower told him “Continue approach - couple of dogs crossing the runway”. Now this was at a time when the phonetic alphabet had just undergone an international revision and for instance A- Able became A -Alpha and D- Dog became D- Delta, so what could the mercurial Chris reply with but “Don’t you mean a couple of Deltas?” ?

 

On leaving school I went down to Sydney to the old flying boat base at Rose Bay, becoming an apprentice there. One night over on Lord Howe Island one of our Short Sandringhams was blown off it’s mooring and damaged beyond repair. Back then the communication networks were not what they are today. The only workable radio link to Lord Howe the next day was poor and calls between the Flight Service Unit in Sydney and the one over on the island were difficult to read as messages about the half sunken flying boat were relayed back and forth. One of our skippers at Rose Bay later told me how hard it was to copy anything. It so happened that at the time Chris was flying somewhere out in the back blocks of NSW, trying to raise Sydney Flight Service with a routine call, but due to the stream of calls “Lord Howe this is Sydney” and “Sydney this is Lord Howe”, having little joy. Finally Chris got a few words in edgeways, as it were, emphasised by the slight stammer that was another of his trademarks, “L-Lord Howe I wish you’d sh-shut up!”

 

Chris eventually quit his job in Tamworth and seeking warmer climes moved to Cairns were he flew DC3s for the pioneer firm Bush Pilots Airways and on occasions filled in for pilots on leave from the Royal Flying Doctor Service. When he finally metaphorically hung up his cap and his goggles he found a place to live in Terrigal on the NSW central coast, near to his family and his adored granddaughter Erin. (“M-my p-pride of Erin”). I only saw him once in those twilight years, staying the night and hearing many stories of a full and fulfilling flying life till dawn’s early light flushed the sky: the sky where his spirit most times dwelled. A week later Chris’s son Murray rang to say that his dad had just passed on to “the great holding pattern in the sky.” If there is an airmen’s Valhalla, I imagine Chris breasting a bar saying “A b-beer b-barman. P-put it where you like. Th-there’s no im-p-pediment in my reach.”

 

 

[Guest Howard Hughes]

That is a very special read John Darcy Williams! :thumbup:

 

 

[Guest Ronnie Biggs]

Well I know my first commercial flight can not even qualify for the same league as yours HH.

 

It was a trial lesson for a walk in customer at Lancashire Aero Club at Barton Aerodrome.

 

I'm not sure who was the most excited me or him.

 

Cessna 150 on the very appropriate date of April fools day.

 

Having hiked around the Olga's and Ayres Rock.

 

And nearly getting deported for accidentally wondering into a religious area.

 

I am very jealous.

 

 

[Guest Howard Hughes]

It's weird that first time they pay you to fly, grinning like a Cheshire cat, it's just like the first solo all over again!

 

 

[poteroo]

DC3 from Brisbane to Moree in Dec 1958. It was hot, rough and rugged. Think I was about the only one not looking into a sick bag. Glad to get off it! Most unimpressed.

 

Then a DC6B from Brisbane to Port Moresby in Jan 1961 - after they changed an engine with us cooling our heels in the old Quonset huts that were Eagle Farm Intl. Then a series of DC3's all over PNG - finally ending up at Mt Hagen in Feb 1961.

 

Then my 1st light aircraft trip with Colin Hey in a Terrirory Airlines C185 from Goroka to Hagen, and a flight with Peter Hurst in a C185 out through Baiyer, Wapenamunda,Wabag,Kompiam and Liaigam. I was sold on lighties - had my PPL by 1963, my CPL by 1965, and flying PNG charter in Nov 1965.

 

happy days,

 

 

[joeyo68]

I was a fresh grade 3 instructor, washing aeroplanes for a living at the local flying school. Took a young work experience kid from a local school up for a TIF.

 

Let's face it, any day somebody pays you for your flying fixes is a good day!

 

 

[Guest Andys@coffs]

Not the first flight but a memorable one.......

 

DC3 from Amberly to Woomera with a bunch of F111 Tech's, me included in support of some bombing trials..... about 3hrs into the 6 hr flight (strong, for a DC3, headwinds) and I wandered down the back to get a Sandwich which we all had to make from the box of bread and fillings that the mess had provided.

 

I was sitting cross legged on the floor mid way through making and we hit a patch of really rough air.... I rose up struck my head on the roof pretty hard and came down smack bang on the loaf of bread with one cheek of me bum and the other on the cardboard box containing the fillings.

 

The loaf before my aerial gymnastics was a normal loaf, but after was more like pita bread.....needless to say the rest of the gang were unimpressed and not much more was eaten!

 

That was the same flight that the pilot came down the back and grabbed about 3 of us and had us all walk together towards the back, wait about 30seconds and then walk to the front wait and repeat...we didn't know what he was doing until the co-pilot yelled out "For F%^k sake!" and then a bunch of other words that we didn't catch cause the pilot was laughing..........Seems DC3 crew had plenty of time for hijinks ....... not the fastest beast aloft.

 

Andy

 

 

[Guest ilium007]

Mine was a charter from Hamilton (Vic) to Nhill (Vic) to take a couple of specialist doctors for a day of consulting and then back home. Never been so nervous and excited at the same time !

 

 

[biggles5128]

Two elderly ladies in their 70s, never been in an aeroplane before, a gorgeous flight up the coast from Coffs Harbour. One of the ladies kissed me on the cheek when we landed and said "thank you young man for not killing us, we have so much life to live yet" I reckon they were right, probably ticking off the bucket list.

 

 

[ben87r]

First paid was an ICUS flight, first light deaprture Alice to Kintore watching to sun rise over the western Mac's with a couple of 130kg miners. Quite like the flying around alice.

 

First command was a department of health run from Tindal to Bulman. Alice flight was a fair bit nicer!

 

 

[Guest Howard Hughes]

I reckon Alice to Kintore was my second flight, I'll always remember that one too, because when I got there the bloke I was picking up had left 15 minutes earlier, for a 9 hour ride back to Alice in the back of a ute!