he was highly delighted. I taught him to wash and clean the aircraft while I worked upon the engine, and when he wasn’t doing that he was running errands for me to the souk—the market. He wasn’t fully employed in those early days, of course, but it was useful to have somebody to help with the refuelling.
It was three months before anyone woke up to the fact that Iwasn’t licensed to carry passengers for hire or reward. I only had a private pilot’s licence. An A.R.B. inspector turned up from Egypt one day, travelling around to see what was going on in civil aviation in the Persian Gulf, and told me that I was breaking the law every time I went up. I knew that, of course, but I hoped that nobody else did.
He was quite nice about it. I told him that next day I had to take Mr. Cassidy and Mr. Hogaarts of the Arabia-Sumatran Petroleum Company from Abu Ali to Kuwait, and if I didn’t turn up they’d be stuck at Abu Ali, and after some hesitation he agreed that I should make this one trip. While we were talking the telephone went and it was Johnson of the Bahrein Petroleum Company wanting to book me for the following Thursday to take a couple of his chaps down to Dubai. I knew Johnson well, and I never believe in hiding things up, so I told him I was with a bloke who said I couldn’t carry passengers for hire because I’d only got an A licence.
“For Christ’s sake,” he said. “Let me have a talk to him.” I handed over the receiver, and he talked to the inspector, saying that they couldn’t do without me and all that sort of thing. The upshot of it was that it was agreed that I should do that one trip also, and by next morning the inspector had thought it over and said that he would recommend that I should be granted a provisional B licence.
The point of this argument was that I could get a B licence without much difficulty on the basis of the experience I had, but I could only go through the examinations for it in England, and I was in the Persian Gulf. I couldn’t have got it when I left England; I wasn’t good enough. I knew that I could keep them talking for some months and in the meantime I could go on operating, and after that I might well find myself in England.
By that time, it was dawning on me that I should have to make a quick trip back to England before long to buy another aeroplane. There was far more work than I could cope with. I was flying four or five hours practically every day, and maintaining the aircraft and doing the correspondence for the rest of the time. At that I was only tackling the fringe of the job. It wasn’t only taking engineers about the country, though I could have useda six-passenger machine on that to supplement the Fox-Moth. There was machinery to be taken out to places in the desert, drilling machinery to be fetched in for reconditioning, spare parts for trucks and bulldozers—all sorts of things, some of them requiring really large aircraft. Nobody was doing more than scratch the surface of the work that was offering, and over and above the lot of it there were things like the transport of pilgrims to Jidda and transport of food to relieve the perennial famines in the Hadramaut.
If I didn’t nip in and get myself established, someone else would come along and do it over my head.
On Bahrein aerodrome the local R.A.F. and civil air staff began to get quite interested in me. It was obvious at the end of the three months that, licence or not, I was on to a good thing and I was doing pretty well. British N.C.O.’s with the R.A.F. used to come along and watch me working with young Tarik, and suggest that they were due to be demobilized in a few months and what about a job? I never engaged one of them. I knew from my own experience the wages that you have to pay British engineers in the East, and I knew that if once I started on that sort of wage bill I’d be bust in no time. Moreover, I didn’t need them. I had all the ground engineer’s licences myself. Young
It was three months before anyone woke up to the fact that Iwasn’t licensed to carry passengers for hire or reward. I only had a private pilot’s licence. An A.R.B. inspector turned up from Egypt one day, travelling around to see what was going on in civil aviation in the Persian Gulf, and told me that I was breaking the law every time I went up. I knew that, of course, but I hoped that nobody else did.
He was quite nice about it. I told him that next day I had to take Mr. Cassidy and Mr. Hogaarts of the Arabia-Sumatran Petroleum Company from Abu Ali to Kuwait, and if I didn’t turn up they’d be stuck at Abu Ali, and after some hesitation he agreed that I should make this one trip. While we were talking the telephone went and it was Johnson of the Bahrein Petroleum Company wanting to book me for the following Thursday to take a couple of his chaps down to Dubai. I knew Johnson well, and I never believe in hiding things up, so I told him I was with a bloke who said I couldn’t carry passengers for hire because I’d only got an A licence.
“For Christ’s sake,” he said. “Let me have a talk to him.” I handed over the receiver, and he talked to the inspector, saying that they couldn’t do without me and all that sort of thing. The upshot of it was that it was agreed that I should do that one trip also, and by next morning the inspector had thought it over and said that he would recommend that I should be granted a provisional B licence.
The point of this argument was that I could get a B licence without much difficulty on the basis of the experience I had, but I could only go through the examinations for it in England, and I was in the Persian Gulf. I couldn’t have got it when I left England; I wasn’t good enough. I knew that I could keep them talking for some months and in the meantime I could go on operating, and after that I might well find myself in England.
By that time, it was dawning on me that I should have to make a quick trip back to England before long to buy another aeroplane. There was far more work than I could cope with. I was flying four or five hours practically every day, and maintaining the aircraft and doing the correspondence for the rest of the time. At that I was only tackling the fringe of the job. It wasn’t only taking engineers about the country, though I could have useda six-passenger machine on that to supplement the Fox-Moth. There was machinery to be taken out to places in the desert, drilling machinery to be fetched in for reconditioning, spare parts for trucks and bulldozers—all sorts of things, some of them requiring really large aircraft. Nobody was doing more than scratch the surface of the work that was offering, and over and above the lot of it there were things like the transport of pilgrims to Jidda and transport of food to relieve the perennial famines in the Hadramaut.
If I didn’t nip in and get myself established, someone else would come along and do it over my head.
On Bahrein aerodrome the local R.A.F. and civil air staff began to get quite interested in me. It was obvious at the end of the three months that, licence or not, I was on to a good thing and I was doing pretty well. British N.C.O.’s with the R.A.F. used to come along and watch me working with young Tarik, and suggest that they were due to be demobilized in a few months and what about a job? I never engaged one of them. I knew from my own experience the wages that you have to pay British engineers in the East, and I knew that if once I started on that sort of wage bill I’d be bust in no time. Moreover, I didn’t need them. I had all the ground engineer’s licences myself. Young
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