WHBM

Actually E E Fresson OBE. Ted Fresson was a pioneer with Highland Airways in the 1930s, started in Inverness and running up through the Northern Isles. From various wobbly light aircraft the De Havilland DH89A Dragon Rapide became the stalwart, right through WW2 and well into the 1950s. Ted was, to use a British expression "shafted" by the London civil servants right after WW2 when, having run decidedly dicey operations right through wartime, it was all nationalised into BEA.

Highland Airways Limited - Wikipedia

There's a fine history book on the little airline, "A Flying Start to the Day", by the same author who did a series on all the pre-WW2 minor Scottish air operations. All have a nice colour cartoon cover embracing its aircraft and the personalities. Ted is one of those standing around the car in the foreground (maybe his wife, too). Pretty rare books to find nowadays, but there's one in an attic not far away from here ...

A Flying Start to the Day. Reminiscences of Inverness' own airline, Highland Airways and its legendary founder, Capt. Ernest Edmund Fresson O.B.E. by Peter V Clegg: Good Soft cover (1986) 1st Edition | MAE Books (abebooks.com)

jrl767

corrected; would have acknowledged sooner, but ScotRail wifi has been very temperamental the past couple days

jrl767

college classmate and I had a very pleasant reunion with WHBM at Duxford yesterday afternoon

various models


Concorde


Dove and Comet


Ambassador and Viscount


tails L-R: Britannia, BAe 146, Super VC-10, Trident, BAC 1-11-500

WHBM

Inter alia, apart from the great static exhibits, it had been decided to take the Duxford Catalina up for a spot of, it appeared, pattern training



"Come on, old girl. Yes, we know you are 80 years old ..."



"Expecting to Fly ..." (with apologies to Buffalo Springfield)




"Phew ... made it ..."

Amazingly that took 2 minutes; 120 seconds, to lift off.

The Catalina ("Cat" to its friends - of which there were, and are, many) did some amazing WW2 endurance records, when there was nothing else with the capability. The "Double Sunrise" went from Perth, Western Australia, to Colombo, Ceylon, 3,600 miles, at the Cat's typical 120mph speed. Left Perth in the morning, into darkness when it was passing within range of Jap fighter planes from Indonesia. Sun up next morning, into Ceylon (now Sri Lanka). Well over 24 hours. Only possible with a huge seaplane run of miles at Perth to get up with its fuel load. It was a Qantas operation. Later it turned up on various amphibian operations in the South Pacific and elsewhere.

G-PBYA here came round the pattern and did a sequence of approaches and touch-and-goes, in the notably strong crosswind blowing across the runway, windsock straight out (middle of the first photo). No simulator, you see. Possibly why they chose this day. Pretty striking wing-down approaches.

jlemon

A major U.S. air carrier which previously operated the Catalina in scheduled passenger service was Alaska Airlines (although AS was quite small back then).

In 1969, Alaska Airlines was operating Catalina flights on a daily routing of Annette Island (ANN) - Ketchikan (KTN) - Wrangell (WRG) - Petersburg (PSG) - Ketchikan (KTN) - Annette Island (ANN) in southeast Alaska as well as operating service several times a day between the Annette Island Airport and the Ketchikan seaplane base. Of course, this was back when Ketchikan did not have an airport for land planes with prop aircraft flights followed by jet service being available via ANN. The Catalina flights between ANN and KTN took about 15 minutes.

Alaska Airlines obtained its Cats (which it referred to as the "Super Catalina" in its timetable) following its acquisition of Alaska Coastal Airlines in 1968. Here's a link concerning historical air service into Ketchikan.....

http://www.ketchikanmuseums.org/virt...ight/index.htm

Scroll down to "Alaska Coastal - Ellis Airlines, 1962-1968". There are some interesting photos included with this article including a shot of several Catalinas on the ramp at the Annette Island Airport back in the mid 1960's with a Pan Am 707 and a Pacific Northern 720 also visible (click on this photo to enlarge it).

And there's also an article concerning seaplane service into Ketchikan operated by Alaska Airlines following its acquisition of Alaska Coastal including a photo of a Catalina on the ramp at Annette Island next to an Alaska Air Convair 240 (see "Alaska Airlines (Seaplane Operations), 1968-1973").

BTW, in addition, this historical website contains an interesting article concerning Pan Am's Sikorsky S-42B and S-43 seaplane services into the Ketchikan area prior to the construction of the Annette Island Airport (see "Pan American Airways, 1940").

WHBM

The Qantas revival, in their ultra long haul A350 proposals under the name "Project Sunrise", of their onetime "Double Sunrise" term of more than 80 years beforehand, is a nice recognition of the past. One hopes that when the first A350 departs from Sydney there will be a Catalina alongside (I believe there's one in Australia) to wish it well. And possibly also when they taxy in at Heathrow there will be Duxford's G-PBYA there to lead them in. What about it, Qantas .

jrl767

I think you�re on to something brilliant!

sadly, though, I have to believe few if any staff in the QF marketing offices or at Duxford will even see this FT thread, much less be in a position to bring the idea forward to decision-makers

WHBM

Just a roundout on JRL's Orkney Islands trip from Papa to Westray, here's the 1939 timetable for the route. Surprisingly similar, one midday departure, make up the sequence of stops on the day. Papa didn't have a landing strip then, but Westray did. Scottish Airways DH89A Dragon Rapide aircraft.

The fares are in Shillings and Pence. 12/6 ("Twelve and Six") is 12 Shillings and 6 Pence. 12 Pence to a Shilling, 20 Shillings to a Pound, which never changed. So 12/6, fare Kirkwall to Westray, is what today is 62.5 Pence.

There's an airworthy Dragon Rapide at Duxford as well !

Track

In 1987 I had completed my assignment in Cologne and wanted to visit China with a stopover in India and ride the Trans-Siberian Express for the fist time before returning to the U.S. My brother, who was in New York, wanted to go along, so we agreed to meet in Hong Kong. The one-way fare from Germany to Hong Kong was outrageously high, so I called the Air India office in Frankfurt for advice. I was told that if I booked the flight through a certain travel agency in Cologne, I could get the ticket a half-price. That was welcome but very surprising information coming from AI. I took the train to Frankfurt and flew Frankfurt-Rome-Delhi-Bombay on an AI 747-200. And then Bombay-Bangkok-Hong Kong on an AI A310-300. We took the Star Ferry to Kowloon and the train to Guangzhou, then a CAAC Trident-2 to Guilin and a CAAC 737-200 to Hangzhou. From there it was all by train: Hangzhou-Shanghai, Shanghai-Xian and Xian-Beijing, this last train pulled by a Chinese-built pacific steam locomotive (wheelbase 4-6-2) as far as Taiyun and thereafter by an electric locomotive. Then it was onto the train to Moscow (via Mongolia). This was during the Gorbachev era, characterized by a campaign against drunkenness and alcohol consumption in general. Even though we took the weekly Chinese train, as opposed to the weekly Russian one via Manchuria, there was to be no alcohol served on board, so in Beijing we loaded up on a supply of beer to accompany our meals. During the week-long trip the dining car slowly ran out of menu items, first caviar, then smoked fish, until as we approached Moscow only (delicious) cabbage soup was available. At least the outstanding tea was at hand in every car. We had a two-bed sleeper cabin, which had a bathroom/toilet with a hand-held shower between every pair of cabins. From Moscow-Shermetyevo to Berlin-Schoenefeld we flew on an Interflug TU-134 and from Berlin-Tegel to Cologne on a British Airways 737-200. The Interflug service was excellent and the cabin staff decked out in very spiffy outfits, but then this was shortly before the collapse of the whole East German system, and they were trying to put on a good show. The return to New York from Frankfurt was on a Pan Am 747 (most likely a 747-100). A fun and enlightening trip!

WHBM

Where's your certificate then ...

jrl767

jlemon

Looks completely bogus.....

jrl767

as far as internet locations in general, this thread is probably safer than most, but I’m cautious about publicizing too much personally identifiable information