Plane Tales

With the influx of new Airbus airframes, Virgin needed more pilots and not just to occupy the right hand seat… there were opportunities for promotion to Captain much earlier than had been the norm.  When I joined the time to command was about 8 years. Looking back I did my first sector with Virgin in July 1994 and it was now November 96, 2 years 4 months later and I was already starting my pre-command training.   A typical month of Tornado flying might accru 25 hours in 15 sorties. As an airline pilot I could easily do that in 2 sectors!   Who wouldn’t want an expenses paid trip to a tropical island?   We were headed to the fabled island home of the extinct Dodo   The result of a Flight Management computer issue was commonly the PLEASE WAIT message   When the Kai Tak IGS approach wasn’t available, we would usually get a VOR approach over Chung Chau and Stonecutters island   Roy and Curly certainly pulled my leg!   The pre command Sim was certainly a challenge   Images under Creative Commons licence with thanks to Jeppesen Charts.

And my heart went!  Thump, thump, thump; thump, thump! I was lying in the King Edward the 7th hospital imagining Phil Collins playing drums on my heart while watching the monitor and wondering how I was going to support my family after I’d been permanently grounded with this condition that had come right out of the blue.  The specialist had confirmed my GP’s diagnosis of…   Digoxin was a plant extract from Foxgloves used as far back as Roman times!   Good old Cookie.   The brilliant Professional Pilot’s Rumour Network   JFK in the snow   The fleet of snow ploughs   Getting airborne in a blizzard   Finally emerging from a line of thunder storms   The Master Warning activates   Images used under the Creative Commons licence with thanks to the Royal Air Force, the Civil Aviation Authority, The Roman 13th Legion, and the PPRUNE website.