Meet the Ricketybus.
This is decidedly NOT the sort of thing Robyn has just flown across the Atlantic in.This is the old Rig Air DC3 of my childhood; the "hop over to Holland if there's no headwind" Ricketybus mentioned in the previous post. The one with old plastic bus seats screwed to a plain plywood floor, no toilet and no food or drink except for a grumpy man handing out barley sugars when we came in to land.
It used to take us one and a half hours to get from the WWII airstrip at Norwich to gleaming modern Schiphol Airport outside Amsterdam, and two and a half hours coming back against the prevailing wind.
The sputtery old warhorse's main job was ferrying oil and gas workers to and from Scotland to be helicoptered out to the offshore rigs; hence "Rig Air", and it cost £9 return to Amsterdam (those were the days).
It felt kind of embarrassing parking this thing in amongst the gleaming TWA Boeing 707s and BEA Vickers VC10s, especially for a plane mad kid like me.
The date on the back of this photo puts me at nine years old. Yikes! Was I ever that young?
One thing I do remember about Schiphol Airport was my first encounter with automatic doors. I didn't want to drive into Amsterdam; I just wanted to run in and out of the airport to make the doors open and close. Wheeee!
Hey ho.
7 comments:
" ...old plastic bus seats screwed to a plain plywood floor, no toilet and no food or drink except for a grumpy man handing out barley sugars when we came in to land ..."
Lucky you! That's more than you get on EasyJet these days! Barley sugars? You didn't know you were born in those days!
Hee hee hee, Betty.
Ah, the good old days, eh?
Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.
I jumped out of a DC3 once. Its hared to imagine having a flight for more than 15 minutes in something so loud. Great prop blast when you get out though!
Cool!
They didn't give us parachutes, Fresh … probably just as well as most of the journey was over the North Sea.
Yeah, I was really glad about the parachute when I got out. It's the little details that put a shine on the flying experience.
The Dc3 is one of the best planes ever built as for the twin prop versions anyway. I wouldn't hesitate to fly on one today.
my great aunt was a professional wingwalker back in the day. maybe I'll do a pot about her.
Cool!
Go for it, Rich!
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