WINGS
-III-
My first week with SEABOARD WORLD AIRLINE was and incredible experience.The staff in Orly airport was divided between white collars and blue collars. It was some kind of a large family working shifts 24/24 and7/7 as flights bringing cargo to France and picking up French exports would never stop. Whenever there was no flight, there was still cargo work to be completed . I had been hired as a traffic agent. Besides a few aviation basics collected during my flight hours over the Paris area, I was totally ignorant about commercial aviation. I had flown before as a passenger on weird airplanes such as the De Havilland Comet 4.B model or the Vanguard operated by British European Airways…..I had even flown on a TWA Boeing 707 on the way to a memorable trip in Egypt, the country where my mother had been born.
The white collar staff was made of three « supervisors » each leading a team of three or four « traffic agents » in charge of administrative or operational tasks in connection with cargo flight preparation. I was totally incompetent in mathematics, so when I saw a weight and balance grid chart and realized that filling it and presenting it to the flight crew would be a part of my daily routine, I got panic striken and nearly thought about quiting before making a dramatic mistake and having a crashed airplane to bear with. It took a couple of colleagues much kindness to help me calming down . « Of course, you can learn to prepare a weight and balance, like we did » Alain C. said . « I will help you for a while, before launching you on your own » added Leon.J a subdued man from the French Carribean Islands. There was also Xavier.G , a corsican young man in love with its « Ile de Beauté » (1), a bit of an anarchist but a good trainer for newcomers like myself, needing to be seasoned. The warehouse staff was a congregation of guys coming from all kind of horizons. As the salaries offered to the staff were higher than in any other industry, they conducted their work with high spirits, even if said work could be physically taxing. The warehouse team operated under the supervision of Daniel D. a temperamental « pied-noir » (2) managing a team of sixty men whom we called by their nickname. I remember Gaby K, a giant, who had a passion for automobile mechanic and kept a car engine in his bathtub, and Marcel D., also called Minou, who provided detailed explanations of his numerous adventures with young women. There was also John M. , a Belgian-British-French supervisor, who could read the teletypewriter tapes (3), Michel M,known under the short name of Mike, and Carmelo C. an other « black foot » who had been working for Royal Air Maroc before joining Seaboard World Airlines, and of course, there was…..me, lost in this new environment, having to discover commercial aviation vocabulary. Since I had learned about filing a flight plan before, It was easy enough to do it for the airline, but putting together the flight paperwork for the crew was an other story. It took my quite a while to make sure that all key documentation was properly inserted in the flight file, and to be able to brief the crew about the specificities of the cargo transported on the day’s flight. Most of the time, we were allowed ninety minutes to turnaround an airplane, which was sufficient time to safely offload incoming cargo and onload the cargo ready for export. On regular basis, we would receive planeloads of strawberries from California and would reload the « Jet Trader » (4) with French Cheeses on their way to America. Needless to say that incoming strawerries were often found in the resting area, along with cheese having fell from one of the cartons. There was a long standing tradition in France, in connection with cargo transported on the railroad, allowing the train engineer to eat and drink using whatever edible stuff was carried on the train. We used this as a justification for our dishonest behavior, but these Californian strawberries were sooooo tasty… !
I had not been told about the schedule pattern during the job interview and I soon discover that airline people did not live like the rest of the « normal folks ». One would work four days of twelve hours each, then there was a four days off duty period followed by for night of twelve hours followed in turn by a for days off duty lapse. It took me a while to get adjusted. I was young, and when I received my first pay, I then realized that the company could ask me whatever they wanted, including working on holidays. Amongst the perks offered by Seaboard World, were the interline agreements with passenger airlines. We could get ninety percent reduction on the major carriers, and sometimes even free passages with a reserved seat. Needless to say that « shift swapping » was commonly conducted, in order to line up twelve days in a row, enough to pack a suitcase and jump on a liner to Saïgon, Tokyo, or New-York. The company was also generous in allowing staff to travel on its airplanes. It was not rare to get a cockpit seat and be on one’s way from Paris to London, Shannon, Milano, Frankfurt or Pisa. We were young and adventurous. I will forever remember the first flight that I handled on my own, in the middle of november 1973. It was a cold morning in Orly and a steady rain had been falling since the evening before. The ramp team guided the airplane to the G.1 parking spot, which was dedicated mostly to our flights, as located across from the Seaboard warehouse. I had run my night routine, preparing and filing the flight plan from Orly to London Heathrow, collected the crew meals from the Compagnie des Wagons-Lits (5), prepared the offload dispatch, the loading sequence and the weight and balance chart indicating the center of gravity of the loaded airplane with fuel on board, and satisfied that everything was ticked on my check list, I was getting ready for my day’s mission. As the slick DC8.63 got to a full stop, chocks were placed by maintenance people,and the crew door opened up. Stairs were swiftly positioned and I climbed on board. There was a smell of brewed coffee and cigarette smoke and the specific scent that characterized cargo planes.
I had never been in a cockpit before . There were colored lights, switches, radio sets, inertial navigation units, controls,fuses, gauges. It was ten times, no, hundred times more impressive than the cockpit of my Jodel D.112 or of the MS 880 which I used to navigate in great comfort.
Hundred time ? More may be…it was simply incredible. I was suddenly confronted with a « real plane », real pilots, true adventure and the fumes of Jet A1 fuel, when ,after the transit was completed, the big airplane started its four Pratt and Whitney engines.
I was a « spring chicken » in this aviation world. The incredible beauty of what I discovered then, was absolutely overwhelming. Was it passion ? Was it simply the induction into a world totally foreign to me till now ? I do not know . I simply recall that, on that very day, on the wet tarmac of Orly airport, as close as I could be from a jet airplane, I simply decided that I would never change my job, regardless of the opportunities, and that I would stay in the airline industry for the sake of airplanes.
It felt like I had found my way.
During lunch break, would would, in turn, get to the domestic terminal at Orly-Ouest, using the company car, to eat at the staff canteen were representatives from various airlines and airport services personnel were eating at noon and in the evening.
Thanks to the salary offered by Seaboard World Airlines, who paid generously for night hours at work, I resumed week-end flying and got additional ratings on different airplanes. But for some reason, It felt like the fun was gone. With the major construction works of the Paris Charles de Gaulle airport, due to open up in April 1974, the flight regulation got modified and flight limitations took away quite a lot of the pleasure of Sunday flying over the countryside. As the general commercial traffic around Paris had drastically increased, flying light airplanes was getting more and more complicated, keeping one eye on the air traffic and one ear « glued » to the headset, listening on the « club » frequency 121.5. I turned to Holiday flying instead, and would it be in Brittany or on the Riviera were my folks had a summer house, I would fly, and fly again over the see shore, over the southern Alps,over the beaches of Normandy.
Orly was getting too small and Seaboard World Airlines was hungry for space. The DC.8 Fleet of thirty-five airplanes, some of them leased out, most of them operating on its network,was due to add soon some much bigger planes to the fleet (6) The construction of Charles de Gaulle Roissy airport being nearly over, it was now time to move. In april of 1974, during a mid week night, a huge convoy of special equipment and office gear left the cargo area at Orly, on its way to the new Seaboard World Airlines home at Roissy Charles de Gaulle . In the passenger terminal also called « le camembert » (7) the paint was hardly dry. Two days after the move, we were suppose to be operational and received the first three flights loaded up with american produce and fruit, but short of being able to handle three airplanes on the ground at the same time, this fragile cargo suffered from the heat and was partially lost. It was time to invest in additional equipment.
« I have big news for you » said Georges Sisque, the station manager .
We had gathered in the cafeteria, knowing that management had a big communication to share. « We will be getting additional ground equipment and a brand new roller system for the warehouse very soon » said the man with the big moustache.
« and guess what… ? » The staff was holding its breath
George Sisque pulled out a colour picture from his files and showed it to the staff.
« In july, you will be working on a brand new Boeing 747 cargo plane, so roll up your sleeves and get ready… » (8)
(1) Corsica is called also l’Ile de Beauté, The Beauty Island
(2) Pied-noir translate by black-feet. It is a name given to the French people who lived in Algeria beofre the independance and were forced to move to France.
(3) Airline communications was mostly done using teletypes sent over a dedicated communication network called RSFTA. One could prepare data onto a perforated paper tape, which was inserted into a « reader » on the teletypewriter for automaed transmission
(4) Jet Trader was the generic commercial name given by Seaboard World Airlines to the airplanes of its fleet
(5) The International Sleeping Car Company had a dedicated kitchen in Orly, serving as a catering base for airlines operating there. Seaboard World was a regular customer of the « Wagons-Lits » kitchen for crew meals and used passenger meals to feed staff when a late airplane transited in Orly during lunch or dinner time in return for worker’s flexibility.
(6) B 747-245 Freighter
(7) Roissy passenger terminal 1 is shaped like a box of camembert cheese.
(8) N 701 SW was delivered in July 1974 and flown shortly after to Paris for hands-on staff training.
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