A Short Story of a Long Flight 1960 Southend It was 1969 and local Jersey dentist Bill Wilkinson flew his Percival Prentice G-AOMF from Jersey to  New Zealand; this is a short story of that flight. Bill Wilkinson had trained as a dentist at Otago University NZ during the 1950s, and had been active with the RNZAF Territorial Squadron based there during that time. After qualifying, he moved to London to practice dentistry but retained his interest in aviation by buying two Prentice aircraft, G-AOLU, and G-AOKF, in July 1962 and a third, G-AOMF, which was registered to WB Wilkinson on 7 Aug 1963. The Percival Prentice was designed as a basic trainer for RAF use, replacing Tiger Moths. The Percival factory was unable to handle the production order, so most Prentices were built by Blackburn Aircraft at Brough. Prentice T.Mk.1 c/n B3/1A/PAC-252 was built by Blackburn and delivered to the RAF in October 1948 serving as VS316. When the Prentice was withdrawn from RAF use in 19...

DC-3 G-AMYJ was to play a big part in my life. It was 1959 when Jersey Airlines received their first DC-3, I was 12 years old,  and to introduce the aircraft they operated a series of local Jersey to Jersey flights. at that age, I was aircraft crazy and my mother bought me a ticket for a flight, my first ever flight. The noise smell and vibration, that was it, I was hooked. Little did I know that years later I would fly the same aircraft as a Captain with Intra Airways, not also that, but G-AMYJ was also the last DC-3 I was ever to fly. Fate would have it, that I was also to fly with the same Captain on that flight in 1959, Captain Alan Spenser "Speny", who I flew with for BIA/AirUk on the HP7 Herald. My first flight on G-AMYJ age 12 in 1959 Jersey to Jersey                            My last flight on G-AMYJ as Captain                  4th April 1978 Dinard to Je...

 DC-3  G-AMHJ  incident  4th April 1978 Paul Gulliver image 4th April 1978 was a date I will not forget, I was a Captain with Intra Airways in Jersey CI, and that day our first flight was Jersey -Staverton -Jersey. I and F/O Clive along with CC Fiona pre-flight checked DC-3 G-AMHJ, we had around 25 passengers and around half fuel for the short flight to Staverton. History tells us that Intra at the time was one of the last operators to use the DC-3 for scheduled passenger operations in Europe. The takeoff and flight up to Staverton from Jersey were normal and we arrived overhead the Staverton NDB beacon ready for the non-precision approach. The weather was not brilliant, however, cloud base around 600ft with easterly surface winds allowed the approach to runway 09 at Staverton. Just as we arrived overhead the NDB beacon there was a huge bang accompanied by lots of vibration, as I was handling pilot it felt like a starboard engine failure, as the old pilot adage of ‘d...

  Intra trips always seemed to start with a last-minute phone call, this one   however, was a little unusual in that the call arrived about 10.00 am. Try and get some sleep today Mike, we want you and Chris to fly tonight, taking MPO down to Naples stopping on route at Le Mans to pick up a load of day old chickens.      It was the 19th of December 1977 and Derek’s first words of “don’t worry Mike we’ll get you back by Christmas Eve”, led into the next part of the trip. “Have at least 12 hours rest in Naples whilst Alan and Peter, who are positioning by BEA to Naples, take over PO on your arrival and continue on to Izmir, unload the Chickens (most still alive we hope) and then position back to Naples for you and Chris to then bring it back to Jersey, you should be back in two days!!”   The thought occurred to me that a DC-3 and 29500 live day-old chicks were not going to be a “Silent Night”.         ...

 12 October 1984. where did 36 years go, 6 sectors Jersey-Southampton-Jersey on this British built beauty.

  The Last Production DC-6     A Texas man with an affinity for the Douglas DC-6 purchased the last production model, DC-6B that is still in its original passenger configuration. The last Douglas DC-6 produced has been stored since 2010. It’s now owned by a Texas man James Mac Ivor. The DC-6B, delivered in the waning months of 1958, is the sister ship to the famous Red Bull DC-6B that continues to be flown occasionally at air shows. This DC-6B, registration V5-NCG, has been stored in Namibia since 2010. It once was the presidential aeroplane for Yugoslav’s leader, Marshal Josip Tito. The plane was then donated to the Zambian government as the presidential aircraft for Kenneth Kuanda. This aircraft and the sister ship were purchased by Namibian Commercial Airlines (NCA). The sister ship, the second-to-the-last built, was  sold to Red Bull. The proceeds were used to restore V5-NCG.     More recently, it served in tourist charter work. The aircraft h...