Events

On Tuesday 3rd February 2015 four FoDTVA members travelled down to Robin Hood Airport Doncaster Sheffield to meet our counterparts at Friends of Doncaster Sheffield Airport.

We stayed at the airport Ramada Encore hotel and the next day met up with four FODSA members as well as Head of Airport Services Lorraine Daffern where we chatted for about an hour, discussing our respective airports and Friends groups.

We then began a comprehensive tour of the airport, starting with the Airport Operations room, and it was interesting to see live CCTV of our own airport as well as associated technical equipment and meeting the staff you speak to when press the button to get the car park barrier to lift etc! Next we moved on to the Fire Section who welcomed us with open arms and hot drinks, followed by Air Traffic Control where our visit was brief due to them getting busy. From here, we went on to the ramp near Hangar 3 where a very special photo shoot was taking place, T2 Aviation, an offshoot of 2 Excel Aviation, had just had a 2nd ‘Oil Spill Response’ vintage Boeing 727 delivered and they had them both nose-to-nose. One had been circuit training earlier in the day – a lovely sight and sound! Finally, we went into Hangar 3 itself for a good look around another Boeing 727, this time only the forward fuselage of an ex-Iberia model, used for educational purposes. Also in the Hangar was the Links Air Jetstream aircraft involved in a landing incident last year, still under repair, and last but not least, the mighty Vulcan bomber XH558. Ian Straw from a company called Directions showed us around the Vulcan area and one of their pilots booted up the Flight Sim and tried to find DTVA for a fly-past, alas unsuccessfully!

After the tour, we headed over to Wetherspoons within the terminal for some dinner, followed by a brief tour of the building. The final item on the list for the day was the reason we were there – we attended FODSA’s monthly meeting where FoDTVA Secretary Chris Smith was Guest Speaker. After an insightful, if a little lengthy, talk by Chris, our two groups exchanged some subtle gifts, said our goodbyes and we headed on home, having had a superb day and deeply looking forward to the next time our paths cross!!

On 10th March, a report on our trip appeared in the Northern Echo – click here.

Here are some photos from the day.

On Tuesday 7th October 2014, FoDTVA assisted Durham Tees Valley Airport with their annual emergency exercise, titled “Exercise Strider” by the Police.

Airport Manager Shaun Woods requested three volunteers to help with registering staff and observers who would be taking part in the exercise and providing them with refreshments, which included everyone from fire, ambulance, and various Police units as well as some on-site companies such as Swissport. We were then invited to observe the exercise itself, with volunteers Richard Bowater and Paul Tasker going over to the ATR-42 fuselage on the south-side which would act as the crashed aircraft, whilst I went to ‘Silver Command’ in the Admin building. A small fire was prepared adjacent to the aircraft fuselage and a number of ‘bodies’ laid out on the ground nearby. In Silver Command, Shaun Woods arrived around 15-20 minutes after the Duty Manager called the crash in (to simulate his driving time from home to the airport, given this was an out-of-hours accident), he then set-up a special white-board designed for such an event and filled out the few details that were known at that point.

One of the first priorities in the event of a crash is to ring a number of individuals in order of priority, but with this being an exercise, most were already in the room. Over the next few minutes, the various emergency services ‘arrived’ on scene, including the Durham Police Silver Commander, who took over control of the accident from Shaun. By now, we knew the crashed aircraft was an ATR-42 with 31 soles on board and it was 1000 meters north of the runway in a farmers field, on fire but intact. Sam Billau arrived and opened up an area of the terminal for concerned relatives and anyone otherwise associated with the crash.

It was soon established that the crash site was within the jurisdiction of Cleveland Police and shortly after their Silver Command took over from Durham’s. Around about the same time, the ‘press’ turned up and were ‘sent’ to the Premier Inn at Morton Park.

Slowly but surely more information trickled in, first we heard the fire was out and the fire-fighters were now entering the cabin with breathing apparatus, half an hour later seven casualties had been recovered, another half an hour later all 31 soles on board were rescued and taken to James Cook Hospital.

All in all it was a surreal experience watching all of this unfold – you soon forget it’s an exercise and it all starts to feel very real, as it is all done very seriously with little to no general chit chat or joking around, everyone knows their role and consequently it all more or less ran near perfectly. Naturally, there was the odd error here and there, but by-and-large this was down to the fact it was an exercise and in the real event would not have happened.

I always thought in the event of a crash any FoDTVA participation could end up being a nuisance, but having observed Exercise Strider I now feel we could come in very handy if, heaven forbid, a real accident occurred, and we’ll now be encouraging the airport to include us on that list of names that get called at the start of such an event, if we’re not already on there!

Many thanks to Richard Bowater for these photos of the event.

In February 2014, the Canadian Warplane Heritage Museum announced that they were to send their prized Avro Lancaster B.X aircraft C-GVRA “Vera” to the UK to join the only other airworthy example owned by the Royal Air Force Battle of Britain Memorial Flight for a six week tour during August and September.

The Canadian aircraft is named after Pilot Officer Andrew Mynarski, who was stationed at RAF Middleton St. George (now Durham Tees Valley Airport) and who died trying to save a fellow crew-member (who ironically went on to survive) during a crash in his Lancaster on a mission originating from RAF MsG.

Given the historical significance of the aircraft to the airport, several parties including ourselves and airport owners Peel, campaigned hard to have DTVA included in the tour, and the Canadians were only too happy to oblige.

The aircraft arrived early evening on Wednesday 27th August to large crowds at either end of the runway as well as at the fence-line next to the terminal building. Although our services weren’t required a few of our members were there to greet her as spectators and hung around to help host a number of veterans who were invited to look in and around the aircraft.

Thursday 28th was the big day, the airport had organised a public open day and the Lancaster was joined by several other aircraft in a static display as well as other aviation and non-aviation exhibits and FoDTVA were responsible for marshalling the 3,000+ visitors that attended. At 3pm, the Lancaster was moved out of the static display and performed a breath-taking fly-past over the Mynarski statue outside of the St. George Hotel. Once it landed again, it was greeted by thunderous applause before being returned to the static display.

At around 6pm, the aircraft returned to Hangar 1 and FoDTVA volunteers jumped inside for the short ride from stand to hangar, hoping in the process we had broken a record for most people inside a Lancaster bomber since WWII, but sadly we’d only equalled it at 28 people. One of our members did however achieve a ‘world first’ – Secretary Chris Smith completed an “Ice Bucket Challenge” for charity with the help of the Lancaster and its crew!!

On the Friday morning, the aircraft departed on a short 30-minute VIP flight but during landing developed an engine problem, which necessitated a full engine change. FoDTVA were called in to help once again and over the Saturday and Sunday, we helped remove the sick engine and strip down it’s components to be fitted to the new engine, before the Canadian engineers hung the new engine back on to the aircraft over the Monday and Tuesday. Everyone became disheartened on Tuesday evening however when the new engine failed to start, luckily though it turned out to be only a minor problem and on the Wednesday, she started up perfectly and after a short test flight, departed back to RAF Coningsby to continue her UK tour.

As a thank you, the Canadian crew gave up four seats on the test flight and put them in to a prize draw, and one of our members – Paul Tasker – was lucky enough to be one of the four winning names picked out! Well done Paul!!

Although the grounding of the Lancaster was very unfortunate, we had a great time helping fix her, we made some great new Canadian friends and we would like to wish them the very best of luck for the remainder of the tour and beyond. They have said we are welcome to visit their museum in Canada any time, and although financially it’s probably not practical, we will certainly look in to it!

The engine repairs caused a large unexpected expense for the Canadian Warplane Heritage Museum, anyone who would like to donate towards the repairs can do so via their website www.warplane.com