the Electra with KLM. What else did I fly on in those days? Just about everything. I reckon my first conscious memory was in about 1954, 53. I was then only three or four. We were flying a lot then, all over the world, because my father was working in Shell Oil. He was an Oil Tanker Captain. So he was moving around. So finally all your life was in ships and planes.
So the journey was about three and a half to four days. It took forever and you spent your time taking off and landing. In those days, the Super Constellation, was still cruising at about 280 knots. And then one day in January... Sorry. I'm getting around to answering your question (smile). In January 1960, Air India was one of the launch custo- mers for the 707. Can you believe that? Air India, which was run by the Tata organization, it was a pri- vate company then, and they invested in the 707. To my shock, I was walked out from London Airport (Heathrow), because in what they call the sheds on the north side, there was no central Heathrow then. It was all old kind of wartime Nissan huts. So we wal- ked out and there was this gleaming 707. And I couldn't believe what I was getting onto as a kid. I said : “Oh my God, look at this. We've got overhead panels. I mean, on the super constellation, you had
Jean-Emmanuel Hay: What's the best memory you have of a flight or the reason you flew?
TimClark: I was one of these kids who was traveling all the time in the holidays. I started boarding school in the UK at seven years old. At the holidays, I would then set off to go to Borneo : and in the late 50s, a journey like that was considered to be going to Mars. Yes, that's true. I used to travel on my own at that age. The routing on Super Constellation was: London-Rome, Rome-Beirut, Beirut-Bahrain, Bahrain-Karachi or Calcutta, Rangoon, and then you'd went down to Singapore. If you took the sou- therly routing, you might go London-Rome, Cairo, Bahrain, Bombay (Mumbai), then Madras (Chennai), Singapore, with Air India. I'd get off in Bombay and gonna stay in the old Tata Motor Hotel. Still there. The next day, I would fly on another super constella- tion via Madras to Singapore. In Singapore, I would get off and go to the Raffles Hotel. Remember, I was eight years old. I was on my own, as an “unaccom- panied minor”, as they called them then. I mean, the airlines were looking after me. They man-marked me. They always had a girl... If I was staying over- night in a hotel, they would always put a girl in the room with me because I was eight. The next day, you go on the Malayan Airways DC-3: Singapore- Kuching-Brunei. Then Shell had their own De Havilland Prince, a twin-engine aircraft: they picked me up and fly me from there to Sarawak.
curtains and things. But these overhead panels with air vents and lights and starlight in the aisles.” I remember that. And when we took off, it went off like a rocket. You see, when the Constellation would started its engines, it started one at a time. And it would rev each engine up before it started the second one. And the third one. And the fourth one. So the startup procedure was about 10 minutes. You trundled out to the end of the runway and you went into a holding area where the throttles were then, for each engine, warmed right up to operating temperature. Another
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