I was a loadmaster on an ATL.98 Carvair on which I had been working average 15-16 hour days. One afternoon we cleared 5,000ft flying east out of Nelson New Zealand. I was in a recliner seat in the hump behind the cockpit when the co-pilot jumped up with a spanner from his seat and came back.

He dived behind the seat I was in and I looked over my shoulder to a spaghetti junction of hydraulic pipes and saw some sort of red, or pink fluid oozing and spraying out.

I exchanged a couple of words with the co-pilot. As I was a student pilot I instantly understood the implications of losing hydraulic fluid was that we might not get the gear down at Wellington.

Next thing I remembered was waking up on finals for Runway 34 at Wellington. Nobody had briefed me what was going on. I was simply so tired I flaked out. I wanted to know what was going on so I got out of the crew seats and moved forward to take the jump seat behind the console pedestal. I saw the big flap selector like a handbrake was down and the wheels selector with a miniature grey wheel on the end of a lever was in the down position. We were down to about 1,500ft on long finals and the atmosphere was intense.

I did not want to distract anybody so I said nothing until after we rolled out. Except for a cockpit fire prior to take off on a rainy night, the hydraulics emergency was my one and only experience and I happened to sleep through it. Kinda embarrassing actually.

ZK-NWA eventually ended up with Brooks Fuel in Canada where she was immaculately restored then trashed on undershooting a short bush strip. The only Carvairs left now are one in USA and another near Johannesburg (former ZK-NWB). RIP Carvair.