Announcement

**Leonard Goss** · December 24, 2019, 12:06 PM

Just like Life Below Zero!

**Graham Ritchie** · December 24, 2019, 01:28 PM

Brilliant photo Joe....did he catch anything?

Our neighbour Margaret called in this morning now "Christmas day" with a special gift, her home made Gateau. Margaret has been our neighbour for many years now, as a child grew up on a farm in Germany during the last war. What is special about her Gateau, that you cant buy, is the amount of "alcohol" she puts in which makes her Gateau especially yummy...... Well I am of to hide it

...have a happy Xmas everyone

**Chip Gelmini** · December 25, 2019, 08:12 PM

Trains on a bad day

**Graham Ritchie** · December 27, 2019, 02:53 AM

You know folks one of the things I enjoy on the internet is coming across old photos especially if I am in it. One such Facebook page, put this one up of yours truly towing a ATP from a gate must be around 1994-95 mark. One comment says that's Graham Ritchie towing, from a person who I used to work with, and is now a ATR72 airline captain flying for Air New Zealand. Its certainly a small world, at the time the company was looking at buying new aircraft, and ATP was out here with the view to sell, however the poor sales team went back to the UK without any sales. This aircraft flew for British Airways and the company I worked for went for the ATR72 instead so spent a couple of years soon after working on the ATR72. They were a good to work for but closed the engineering side down in 1997 and made us all redundant..

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**Graham Ritchie** · December 27, 2019, 03:26 PM

One other photo I came across brought back memories of a Christmas break up, when my boss asked me to go to the gate and tow the ATP into the hanger. I reminded him that I had a couple of beers, he replied you will be right, so of I went in the tug. The ATP was about 20 foot longer than the HS748, so the yellow line for swinging the aircraft into line just outside the hanger was of little use. Anyway being good at what I do

I did manage to line it up spot on, but what I remember the most was my boss in the far distance watching my wing tips and tail with a glass of beer in one hand and giving me the thumbs up with the other. Just behind him was the spit roast doing its thing for the staff Christmas break up. Bringing in a aircraft into the hanger always needed someone to watch things as clearance wise things could be tight, and being on the tug towing you cant see the wing tips and tail,

**Graham Ritchie** · December 27, 2019, 03:32 PM

**Douglas Meltzer** · December 27, 2019, 07:45 PM

Graham,

Redundant? What an awful use of that word!

Doug

**Graham Ritchie** · December 28, 2019, 11:42 AM

It certainly is Doug even though we were making a profit money wise it was our major shareholder Air New Zealand that closed us down. The Mt Cook group which included the airline started as a family business. It was in later years when shares went on the market. ANZ over those years increased there holding until they had it all. That's what I would call, started to asset strip the group. It was nasty stuff and the people I worked with who had been with the company for a lot longer than me were given there termination dates like I was. To this day there is still ill feeling among many, as to how they were treated not by our own management I should add, but that shareholder. I have been in many jobs over the years but the run down to closing in that one was the worst. You could see the effect on people it was having during those final months "not nice" . Two years later I went through it all again with "Ansett New Zealand" but for me not as bad , as somebody said to me in the Ansett hanger at the time..."you must be getting used to this"....In fact I was one of the lucky ones to leave early, as later on it went bust bit time owing millions. I bumped into one of the guys who ran the night shift that was effected years later, he told me all the money he put in for his retirement was gone he was owed thousands. I don't know the final outcome for him and others in that position, and frankly I don't no what you can do as most was leased with little assets to sell. But in saying all that both Mt Cook and Ansett were really good to work for "the people that is" and I have no regrets of my time with them.

One you-tube video caught my eye around 6 months ago of a flight of "Air North" in the Yukon, Canada. They were boarding the aircraft for a flight from Inuvik to Dawson City when I noticed a door seal mod we we had carried out in the past. It turned out to one of our old Mt Cook 748 aircraft after getting a reply from the you-tube poster, here is a link for those interested, its nice to see those old aircraft still had a life, they were ideal for rough strips they were built like a tank an ideal choice for Air North...

**Graham Ritchie** · December 29, 2019, 11:27 AM

I am surprised that this short video I took at the time had survived all those years...

**Graham Ritchie** · January 01, 2020, 12:24 AM

Well its the evening of the 1st January 2020 and tonight I thought the sky looked a bit strange until I read about the smoke from the Australian bush fires travelling the 2000km across the Tasman sea to NZ..

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