Flying back to UK aboard a ‘Trooper’ from Cyprus a few years ago.
The take off was…well it was abit like ‘look at me, I’ve got three chuffing great engines and we’re gonna wheelie this thing if its the last thing we do’. I think the pilot that day had watched one too many car chase movies the night before.
We pulled onto the runway and almost before he was straight, the throttles hit the stops and we where mushed back in the seats (Half empty the plane this trip !). It was as if someone’goosed’ the old girl and we fairly leapt off the tarmac. D*mn, it good !
The flight was as bumpy as the chair I’m sitting in at the moment, no turbulence or anything till we started to let down through the UK clag into Brize.
It must have resembled one of those days when you come home and find your kids trying to get Concorde down on the Isle of Wight in MS Flight SIm version whatever…you know how it goes…the joystick is actually stirring a particularly thin porridge mixture cos its trying to be everywhere at once and the loud levers are iether fully open or fully closed !.
I dont think he barrel rolled but wouldnt like to swear to that fact.
We werent shot down…I dont think…but when he’d finally got it stopped and started to taxi back to the ramp, the right hand main undercarriage squeaked and ‘graunched’ like an overladen wheelbarrow being pushed on a rocky building site.
It’s funny but the captain wasnt there at the top of the stairs to say ‘bye’. Personaly, I think he was an ex-Naval carrier pilot and wasnt used to the runway being so damned stationary !
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