LIQUID EIGHT

I am now 60 years old, so I am out of Part 135 operations. However, there is still some fire left in the hearth and so there may still be some sparks which I could offer to the Part 121 side of the aviation industry, if required.

- HUGH PRYOR

IT WOULD BE A SHAME to pour water on the fire when the coals are still glowing, don't you agree? After all, I have been 'Part 121' for almost my whole career.

I live in Mombasa Kenya and so I went up to Nairobi for an Aircrew Medical. My company Ops Department had e-mailed me to say that they would need me back in Bujumbura, on the 16th of February and please would I organise the travel arrangements as usual.

Bujumbura is the capital of the tiny country of Burundi, up in the top right-hand corner of Lake Tanganyika in the middle of the vast continent of Africa. Once there, I was to take over as Captain on a DHC-6 Twin Otter, on contract to the United Nations, in their efforts to bring peace to a country where up to a million people were killed in a carefully planned and executed act of genocide. My medical was actually okay up to the end of March, but I would be on duty till the end of the first week in April, so they asked me to get the medical out of the way early, before I went. I received their e-mail on the 27th of January, so that gave me lots of time to organise things.

My Medical Examination was with an old friend, Dr George Irvine Robertson. I have known him for over thirty years. In fact I bought our house from him, on the shores of the Indian Ocean, just north of Mombasa. It is a little paradise on Earth and I still wonder that he could have parted with it.