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A R C H I V E S

CAPTAIN CARGO

Meet Captain Cargo, a real person plying the airways above a city near you. Here begins “A View From The Bridge—The Adventures of Captain Cargo.” We appreciate your comment.

"PLAIN SPOTTING"

     With the acquittal of the British plane-spotters who got arrested in Greece, £25, 000 each and a year later, I am sure some people are wondering what all the fuss was about. Apparently, they have now been invited, by the Greek Air Force, to attend the self-same airshow they were arrested at a year ago. Is it any wonder, however, as to why they got arrested in the first place?
     They probably had tens of thousands of pounds worth of listening and photographic equipment between them. They were sneaking around in anoraks jotting down notes, pointing huge lenses through fences. They’d been warned before they first went to Greece that plane-spotting was not an activity that was understood, let alone tolerated. I’m not having a go at planespotters. I just don’t quite get it, either.
     Years ago I had some brief person-to-person interaction with a planespotter, while flying Electras in and out of Coventry Airport. Coventry Airport is the last of the old-style airports, pre fancy architecture, taxi-ranks and multi-storey car parks. It’s plane spotter heaven, or was when I was flying in there. Sitting in the canteen-style restaurant, every night, sat a quiet group of people laden with binoculars and V.H.F. receivers, munching from plastic lunchboxes and drinking tea from thermos flasks. Through the windows you can see the ramp. Every night, Electras, F 27’s., Shorts 360’s (sheds), and until recently DC6’s arrive and depart laden with freight, watched lovingly by this group of “enthusiasts”. Unless you made a conscious effort, you would not actually notice these people. They kept to themselves, and, since they were not spending money in the restaurant, kept a low profile. However, every time there was a radio transmission from the tower, there would be a buzz of activity: binoculars would be trained down final appoach, they would stand to watch the aircraft taxi in; much scribbling was done in notebooks. After the aircraft had parked, the engines been shut down and the cargo door opened, they would return to their sandwiches and compare notebooks, lovingly annotated with years of aircraft movements.
     One day I decided to approach one of them. I was dressed in uniform, and I felt a bit self-conscious as I approached a guy of about thirty sitting in a pair of jeans and an anorak. The look on his face as I approached was one of rapt suprise, the poor chap unable to contain his excitement as I walked over to his table resplendent in my pilot’s uniform. He grinned inanely at me as I sat down opposite him with my mug of coffee. I’d seen him every single time I’d been into Coventry for about three months. I wondered if there was a type of plane spotter that specialised in freight, for that was the only traffic. On the table next to him was his thermos flask, a radio, and three notebooks, one of which looked at least twenty years old.
     I introduced myself. “Dave,” he replied. “my name’s Dave.” On the table next to Dave was a satchel containing the tools of his trade: camera, Thermos, notebooks, Jane’s book of aircraft recognition, VHF scanner.
     He was a bit reticent at first, deducing correctly that I thought he had some sort of personality disorder. I stopped the waitress, and after some gentle protests managed to order him a coffee. When his coffee arrived, he loosened up a bit. He’d been an aircraft spotter as long as he could remember (how long that was, I did not ascertain). He told me of glorious summer days spent with his father parked just outside the fence of Manchester airport, the incoming aircraft, wheels down, passing over their heads as they sat on the bonnet of his dad’s Ford Cortina, drinking hot soup and eating cheese sandwiches, sniffing the kerosene fumes and jotting down the aircraft registrations. Dave claimed to have seen at least one example of every single British civil and military aircraft built since 1952, and a good few from before then. He told me how his dad had been arrested at Mildenhall, suspected of being a Russian spy, and how he’d loved being considered so important (he hadn’t made it as far as the tabloids, however) until the Military Police had realised he was just a crank who liked watching aeroplanes: of the day when he’d seen an emergency landing at Croydon, and another at Coventry, and heard all the transmissions to and from the aircraft.
     Well, he wasn’t such a bad guy. And, yes, I still find it a bit strange that someone would devote all their free time to freezing outside an airport perimeter fence. But, hell, someone should be using this guy’s enthusiasm. I mentioned it to another Captain, Mike, and we persuaded the handling agents to employ him. This was the perfect employee. You probably wouldn’t even have to pay him. They gave him a job on the ramp, initially putting chocks under wheels and connecting GPU’s. Six months later, he pushed me back one night.
     I’d had a brief chat with him in the airport restaurant. I’d asked him how the planespotting was going. “Oh, I don’t get time for that, anymore, ‘ he’d answered. “What, with the job and everything.”
     I couldn’t help noticing, though, that he was almost oblivious to the group of young men huddled at a table in the corner, twiddling knobs on scanners, and jumping up occassionally to investigate some noise outside.
     Ah, well. I’m sure the others would get on fine without him.