By Eduardo González Sarría and Lionel Reid EXTRACT: MiG DOWN Luena, August 1985 “Wakey wakey, my pigeons, you’ve got a lot of flying today.” The voice was accompanied by a banging on the bunk bed structure on which Eduardo lay. “God damn you, Januaria!” Mauricio said. The dormitory came toRead More →
Sling’s 1000 and Onwards Guy Leitch chats to Sling Aircraft Executive Chairman, James Pitman, about the company’s rapid growth. GL: Congratulations on over 1000 Sling deliveries. Many of these were sold as kits – do you have any idea how many are flying? JP: We’ve taken orders for 1,250 Slings:Read More →
Laura McDermid continues her stories about Iris McDermott in East Africa. I resigned from my role as a commercial pilot at Air Kenya at the close of 1979 and in April the following year joined a company called Sunbird Aviation based out of Wilson Airport in Nairobi. The fledgling airlineRead More →
Pilots seem to be finding new ways to kill themselves. In the bad old days, the Christmas holidays always featured a couple of fatal accidents where pilots, usually flying from the Highveld, pushed their luck with the weather over the escarpment and ended up smeared across implacable rocks. These areRead More →
After 20 years of flying my second homebuilt, preceded by 9 years in my first, I wish I could say that most things that can go wrong already have; but the gods might think me insolent. At this point, however, I can at least say what has worked and whatRead More →
Jeffery Kempston One warm December, evening I overheard a story in the Lanseria Airport bar. A private pilot from Salisbury, Rhodesia, had bought a new Cherokee Six from the factory and entrusted its delivery to a US airline pilot friend. This gentleman had wished to buy a new 300 hpRead More →
The SAA Takatso sale – is it still on? Guy Leitch In May 2021 the South African government announced that it had selected a preferred private sector ‘strategic equity partner’ to acquire a majority state in the then moribund state-owned South African Airways. That partner is the Takatso Consortium. TheRead More →
By Eduardo González Sarría and Lionel Reid Published by Mercury. Available in all good bookstores and online: R385. EXTRACT: THE HUMBLE ASSASSIN THE HUMBLE ASSASSIN How the humble SAAF Impala Mk 2 fought far above its weight class. “Sometimes it is the people who no-one imagines anything of who doRead More →
Peter Garrison I take a miserly pleasure in finding big expensive books on sale at desperately low prices. A bookstore near me, another victim of Amazon, closed recently, disposing of most of its inventory, during its final weeks, at progressively more drastic discounts. I had admired one book in aRead More →
Indian Ocean Island Odyssey (or Fiasco) Jeffrey Kempson Before the South African political transformation, a group of diving enthusiasts wished to extend their diving experience to the more northern reaches of the Indian Ocean. They were aware of the Coelacanth discovery near the Comoros Islands, and the proliferation of exoticRead More →
