The Package Tour Industry E-Book

Vincent Cobb

• Herausgeber: M-Y Books ltd
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 278

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2012

Beschreibung

Millions of us take package holidays for granted every year but did you ever wonder how it all began? Thanks to Vincent Cobb's 35 years experience working in the travel industry culminating in his position as Managing director of Thomson Holidays we can learn about all the tricks they had to get up to that formed the basis of the business at its outset. This fascinating book allows us to observe the industries steep learning curve from it's infancy in the late 50's to the present day using you the public as guinea pigs. You will find this a gripping yet refreshingly humorous account. The author will tell you of dramatic journeys by plane, coach and ship, both by day and night, involving relentless pressure and many sleepless nights. Fasten your seat belts and get ready for a bumpy ride! Revised and updated with even more detail and history than previously published this is a valuable reference work of social history at a time when we took our lives in our hands when we went on Holiday .

Leseprobe

The Package TourIndustry

By

Vincent Cobb

Published by M-Y books

An M-Y BOOKS PAPERBACK

The right of Vincent Cobb to be identified as the author of This work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

All Rights ReservedNo reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication May be made without written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, Copied or transmitted save with the written permission or in accordance With the provisions of the Copyright Act I956 (as amended). Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to This publication may be liable to criminal Prosecution and civil claims for damage.

First published in 2005

A CIP catalogue record for this title is Available from the British Library

ISBN 0-9547280-7-6

Cover design by Zipline Creative

To Carl, Tricia, Sandra and Amy, who have been with me on this trip from the start. Warmest thanks to all who have offered advice, support and positivity on the way.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTSFor:

My wife, Pat, who shared many of these experiences with me and although has not read the book, convinced me I needed a hobby.

To Steven Humphries of Testimony Films who persuaded me it was a book worth writing.

And to my family in the hope that should they ever read it they will remember me.

Cover by Andrew BrechinAndrew Brechin [email protected]

PROLOGUE

This narrative of the package tour industry is not intended to provide a historical account of its origins and developments from its conception. That would be a task of monumental proportion and is best left to the academic historians who specialise in researching the details and minutiae associated with such projects. Although I spent the best part of thirty-five years in the package tour field, the period I will deal with in this account covers, generally, but not entirely, what I describe as the dramatic years of I959 to I965 or that era between infancy and adolescence. I have also added an important section describing some of the major events that occurred in the industry right up to the end of the seventies. My story is a personal one, told through the eyes of one of the industry's pioneers, who lived through the early days of holiday travel. I will describe for you the untold hardships of passengers who, many times unknowingly, risked life and limb flying in antiquated, unpressurised, very often World War Two vintage aircraft; when safety was downgraded largely due to ignorance rather than wilful neglect and passengers were generally unaware of their status as the industry's guinea pigs. In the period I refer to it should be remembered there were no 'fan jets' available to the charter sector of civil aviation; in fact, it was only just over a year since the terrible disaster at Munich with the Manchester United football team. The model of plane involved in that tragedy, no doubt for reasons of marketing, had its name changed from the 'Elizabethan' to the 'Ambassador'. Nonetheless, it was the same type of aircraft now carrying package tourists on charter flights.

I will tell you of the incidents I experienced throughout those years, flying in those geriatric planes, and of the interminable delays when a four or five hour wait was considered the norm and it was far from unusual for delays of twenty four hours to occur; and how, during the many hours of frustration passengers had to contend with, they were also faced with the cramped, totally inadequate airport facilities, with limited seating and toilet arrangements. I will also relate the crashes and emergency landings that seemed to be a regular feature of the late fifties/early sixties in the package tour industry, and in which I personally had several hair raising experiences.

I will also describe for you the type of hotels featured in those times, where private facilities consisted of one bathroom at the end of the corridor, where hot water was restricted to a couple of hours a day if you were lucky air conditioning was an open window and full board catering could mean an invitation for hospital treatment. And when we contracted for hotel accommodation we had to identify whether or not the rooms would be in the main hotel or in the one of many annexes used by even the best of hotels. Because in the early sixties, an annexe in hotel terms meant a room or rooms that could be anywhere up to a mile from the main building and were often in private houses.

I will mention also the experiences on some of the more dubious coach air holidays, which, in the late fifties and early sixties, were capacious, when it was not uncommon to spend twenty four hours in total discomfort, and then stagger from the coach into a third world hotel on the Costa Brava wondering if your bladder would ever forgive you for your neglect. I will describe the ancient coaches which frequently broke down or suffered punctures in foreign countries; hotel accommodation en route which today even backpacking students would consider insulting, and refreshment stops which, on the frequent occasions on which you were delayed, you would often discover where closed. Those were the days of adventure, where every dip brought new experiences, usually of an unfortunate nature, where the resilience of our clients, at times in the face of considerable distress, encouraged the phenomenal growth of package tours.

The industry has much to thank the travelling public for, as it was essentially their indefatigable thirst for travel, their insatiable appetite to visit new and exotic places, that was responsible for laying the foundation of what was to become an immense multi billion pound enterprise, employing hundreds of thousands of people and ultimately enriching the lives of millions.

I hope you find the narrative interesting, and if I may have given the impression that holidays in the early days were fraught with misery and discontent, then I truly apologise. The stories I have told are factual and did actually happen, although in some instances I have deliberately changed participants' names to avoid embarrassing them. Allow me also to apologise if some of my dates might be questionable memory is not always reliable but, nonetheless, that does not make the events I describe any the less true! The truth is that the pioneers of this industry were themselves undergoing a learning curve and very largely were circumscribed by the facilities available to the market, such as obsolete aircraft, inadequate hotels that had simply not been designed for holiday makers and, probably worst of all, the almost total lack of communication throughout Europe which prevented the companies from quickly resolving problems. And if our clients did experience suffering and hardship it certainly was not borne out of indifference.

It is a fact that we appreciated the continual support of the travelling public; in the main they enjoyed the experiences and the novelties and if the contrary had been the case then the package tour industry would have suffered a very early demise, instead of becoming the sophisticated giant it is today.

CHAPTER ONE

1959   THE EARLY DAYS

I began my 'career' in the travel industry during the summer of I959 with a small Blackpool travel agency with the now perhaps misleading name of Gaytours! I managed to persuade the owner, a Mr. Norman Corkhill, to take me on in a position, which he felt, was only suitable for a female; I mention that only to illustrate the extent of my enthusiasm for joining the travel industry as it was then.

At the time I was twenty four years of age, married with a young daughter, and had a semi detached house with a mortgage we couldn't afford. My initial wage at Gaytours was the princely sum of ten pounds a week. To try and overcome our financial difficulties we let the 'front' room and one of the bedrooms of our house to a young couple like ourselves. Even so, life was hard.

I spent most of that first summer either dealing with theatre tickets for Blackpool holidaymakers or travelling between Blackpool and Southend on one of the coaches we organised for our coach/air holidays to Jersey. In those days it was a round trip of over five hundred miles the return journey taking place overnight. Sometimes, if I was lucky and the ancient DC3 aircraft we used wasn't full, I was privileged to fly to Jersey, immediately turn round, and fly back again to Southend. On the Sundays when the flight in either direction was full, I had to sit it out in Southend Airport for about three hours until the returning passengers landed and we set off on the return coach journey through the night.

It was hard work, excessively hard work, particularly as I had to be in the office again on the Monday morning, almost immediately after arriving in Blackpool. But I thoroughly enjoyed it. I enjoyed the freedom, the variety and above all the sense of adventure I felt each time I undertook a journey. By the end of that summer I had more or less become a permanent fixture around the office and, increasingly, Norrman trusted me with greater responsibility. So much so that when our end of season holidays for the Blackpool Landladies took off in the October, I was given the job as courier to escort a party down to Southampton to join up with the Bergen Line cruise ship to Madeira. It was to be my first experience in 'diplomacy'.

October 1959

The 'Vomiting' Venus'

It was a lovely morning that Friday in October very unusual for Blackpool. At that time of the year it was normally much wetter and windier than we were used to in the summer months.

It was a very exciting day for me. As I mentioned, I had been charged with taking a party of Blackpool landladies (they insisted on being referred to as 'hoteliers!') to connect with the Bergen Line cruise ship, the Venus, from Southampton. We were scheduled to fly from Squires Gate Airport on a twin engine Viking aircraft to Gatwick, where we would meet up with a second, smaller party of hoteliers from Jersey and then coach the group down to Southampton Docks.

The package tour industry in those days was virtually nonexistent. In point of fact the name had yet to be coined; it was generally known as 'the travel industry', which covered every aspect of travel including the railways. Airports were largely unchanged from the Second World War which, effectively, meant passenger facilities consisted of a collection of old Nissen type huts and sheds. The aircraft in which passengers had to fly in at that time were of the same vintage; I remember flying in one particular DC3 which still proudly displayed bullet holes down one side of the fuselage. They were, for the most part, twin-engine propeller planes, with dodgy old seats, unpressurised and violently uncomfortable in bad weather, which was fairly frequent given their height limitations. They also had a restricted flying range, which in turn required one, sometimes two, re fuelling stops on the Mediterranean journeys.

But all this was of no concern to me. I now, rather arrogantly, and presumptuously I might add, regarded myself as part of management and I was living a great adventure.

Quite unbelievably we took off on time from Blackpool that morning. Everyone was in a good mood, which meant no one had yet complained. After an uneventful flight which I found quite disappointing, I was looking forward to some stormy weather; we landed at Gatwick Airport at approximately eleven o'clock, and hit our first problem: the Jersey flight was delayed by fog but hopefully it should clear within the hour. So we had to wait, something Blackpool landladies are not noted for. It was ten minutes before the first one started moaning lucky I had been warned.

"Ere! What's going on? What the bloody hell's happening?' It was one of the older women, a particularly nasty piece of work in her late fifties who wore a permanent angry scowl on her face.

'Well, as I explained on the flight from Blackpool,' I began, 'we're meeting up with a flight from Jersey and then we'll all go in the coach to Southampton. It shouldn't be too long.' 'You've no bloody right to keep us here waitin' you've got to give us refreshments! And just how long are we going to wait, anyway?'

I had no instructions about paying for refreshments, so I declined her directive.

'Look,' I said, 'why don't you go for a cup of tea and put your feet up, we should only be about an hour.'

'You're payin',' she demanded.

'I'm afraid not. This is what is known as a 'force majeure", you know, an Act of God. So we can't be held responsible.'

She went off grumbling and I learned my first lesson about complaining Blackpool landladies; never give in to their moans or they'll literally have you for breakfast!

And so that is how the rest of the trip continued. The Jersey flight eventually landed a little after twelve no big deal in my book, but Christ, you should have heard the Blackpool contingent complain. Finally I shepherded the passengers onto the coach the Jersey clients were exceptionally nice people, something I was completely unprepared for and we set off for Southampton, about an hour away by road. It was just after one o'clock as we entered the suburbs of the town; it was then that a deputation of the Blackpool group approached me. The same woman from the airport was amongst them, a Mrs Hodgson, I later learned.

'You know what time it is, don't you?'

I checked my stainless steel Timex, "One o'clock."

'Yeah. And it's dinnertime. when do we get us dinner?'

I was a bit stumped at that, I had to admit. So I said, 'You'll get lunch, (I was becoming quite sophisticated by then, dinner was something you had in the evening!) on the ship.'

'We will hell! By' time we get on' ship they'll have finished serving. So we'll miss out on a bloody meal. And that ain't a force whatnot, it's your fault. So what you gonna do about it?' I checked the Bergen Line documents again: embarkation at 1400 hours, ship sails at 1500 hours. We still had plenty of time, and having been on the phone to the office from Gatwick, I was authorised, if it came to it, to provide them with a 'cheap' lunch. So I directed the driver to find the cheapest restaurant he could, which turned out to be a pub, and I arranged a simple set meal for them all.

Soon there was a brief respite from the complaining, as the driver and I found a quiet corner in the pub for a sandwich. Then came the monumental task to get them all back on the bus; they were well into the booze by then and It was a quarter to two before I managed it, and just after two when we turned into wharf thirty-two, from where the Venus was sailing. It was then I noticed one small further problem: the ship was pulling away from the dock without us on it. Panic stricken I grabbed hold of an old local 'salt' to ask him where the Venus was going. I thought it might just be changing berths.

'The fackin' ship's sailin,' he grinned.

'Well get the fackin' thing back,' I shouted in horror. I had thirty-two passengers on the coach who had paid a small fortune for their holiday, and who now had nowhere to go and nothing to go to it on. I turned to look at the group fully expecting uproar, and was pleasantly surprised to see them all sitting there in open-mouthed silence. They were literally gob smacked!

Rather fortuitously, I had experienced something similar a few years earlier when I spent some time in the Merchant Navy as a Boy Rating. Two of us, overindulging one night in one of the many pubs on Commercial Road, which bordered the length of the King George the Fifth Docks where our ship was berthed, were late getting back. When we did eventually return to board the ship we discovered, to our intense amusement, that it had already sailed and was on its way down the Thames. A friendly dock policeman pointed us towards the offices of the Port Line handling agents, who very reluctantly gave us a lift in a tender. We managed to board the ship in the Thames Estuary, just as the pilot was disembarking, and escaped with a warning from the First Officer.

So I contacted the handling agents of the Bergen Line in Southampton and explained the problem. Eventually they managed to make radio contact with the ship, and the Captain agreed to halt the ship, which by then would be about three miles down the Solent. A rather smallish tender I would say it was no longer than twenty feet appeared, and, with a lot of pushing and shoving, we managed to crowd everyone on board. The landladies meanwhile uttered not a single word. Among the Jersey passengers were two disabled teenage girls and, given that the weather had taken a turn for the worst and that we were now hitting quite a strong swell, I was concerned as to how we would be able to transfer the two girls from the tender onto the rolling Venus. To make matters worse it was dark by the time we finally caught up with the cruise liner and even with all the lights at maximum, visibility was quite difficult.

The gangplank had been lowered and the bosun was stationed at the bottom. We had to wait until the swell of the river moved the tender close to the gangplank, and then physically 'throw' the passengers across the gap. It was extremely dangerous not helped by the jeering passengers lining the upper deck of the Venus and in one instance the bosun missed a Blackpool woman and she half fell into the river. What a bloody performance!

In all it took the best part of an hour to transfer everyone except the two disabled girls. The only answer we could come up with to solve that problem was to tie a rope around each of their waists, and from there to the rail of the tender, while its pilot and I each took an arm. We then had to suspend them over the side until the two boats were virtually touching, at the same time praying that the bosun would catch them. The girls, to their credit, thought the whole affair was hilarious, the opposite of their guardian, who stood halfway up the gangplank shrieking that we were trying to kill them! Transferring the luggage took no time at all but I was somewhat bemused to see a couple of cases the only casualty off the adventure floating off down the Solent.

It was nine o'clock at night before the operation was completed and I now had to face the added problem of how to get back to Blackpool. The original plan was for me to return on the same coach to Gatwick and then catch the scheduled flight I had travelled on that morning, back to Blackpool. Now that was all up the spout!

But all that was mostly irrelevant compared to my relief that we had avoided a disaster. My final memory of the experience as the tender headed back to the dock was of Mrs. Hodgson, perched on the top deck of the Venus, shaking a fist at me and screaming that we hadn't heard the last of it. I never knew whether or not she heard me, but I shouted back at her from the safety of the tender 'Well, you're the greedy cow who wanted lunch!'

We never did solve the confusion of the mix up in sailing times. Bergen Line insisted it was our fault for not translating GMT into British Summer Time and tried to bill us for an extra meal for all the passengers and crew. We told them not at all politely, I might add to sod off, and challenged them to show us on the passenger tickets where it mentioned Greenwich Mean Time. The matter was dropped, but not forgotten, as Mrs. Hodgson had let me know in her farewell speech.

By the time we docked at Southampton again it was half past ten at night; needless to say the coach had long gone, and I still had to find a way home before morning. I was due to fly to Majorca at nine o'clock the next day on a charter flight from Blackpool. I had no idea how I was going to make it. Then one of the customs officers offered me a lift to the station with the suggestion that there still might be a train to London. Thankfully he was right. I caught it with five minutes to spare but I now had no means of letting anyone know where I was or what was happening we didn't have a telephone at home in those early days and there was no such thing either as direct dialling, so I could hardly have phoned the boss from the deck of a tender!

I got to London at about half past midnight, indulged in the luxury of a taxi to Euston, and managed to make the night train to Glasgow, which stopped at Preston. It was with some trepidation that I woke up my boss, Norman Corkhill, and told him what had happened, thinking he might go through the roof. I remember his words to this day: 'You're in the travel business now, Vincent. You just have to cope with these little problems!'

'Bastard', I thought afterwards. He might at least have shown a little bit of sympathy. But as the years passed and my experiences of the industry grew, I came to realise he was correct in what he had said.

THE FIRST CHARTER FLIGHT

I caught the milk train from Preston, arriving in Blackpool at about six in the morning. I walked home from the station, just as Pat, my wife, was feeding our twelve month old daughter. I barely had time for a cup of tea, a piece of toast, and a shave before Norman arrived to take me to Squires Gate Airport to catch the charter flight to Palma. I hadn't been to bed, and had managed only a couple of hours' sleep on the train, but the excitement and adrenaline of actually flying to Spain kept me going. Besides, I could hardly allow my unsympathetic boss to know I was bloody exhausted, could I? It was the same aircraft that I had flown into Gatwick on the morning of the previous day: a thirty four seater, twin engine, unpressurised and extremely uncomfortable, Vickers Viking. It had a crew of three; Captain, First Officer, and a stewardess, who I quickly realisedI was expected to help.

The weather in Blackpool that morning was back to its normal self; black skies, heavy rain and gale force winds. Norman soon had a heated discussion with the pilot because he was refusing to take off in what he described as 'atrocious conditions'. We genuinely couldn't understand what the hell he was going on about; why should a bit of Blackpool weather prevent us from flying? I learned that day: you simply did not argue with Norman Corkhill he was far too devious and manipulative ever to lose an argument.

Finally, at around three o'clock that afternoon, without the weather abating, the Captain was persuaded, in the interest of his job, that it might be advisable to concede and agree to take off. Such a thing today, of course, would be inconceivable, but in I959, the Civil Aviation Authority didn’t exist: a body known as the Air Transport Advisory Committee or the ATAC for short governed the aviation industry. The role of that august body was not related to the safety aspects of aircraft or flying in general; it was more a governmental protective body set up to ensure that competition for BEA and BOAC, the nationalised carriers, remained non existent.

So it wasn't that difficult for Norman in the end to convince the Captain of our Viking aircraft to take off in the Blackpool weather helped by the inevitable deputation of complaining Blackpool landladies. My thoughts at the time, I remember, were, thank Christ I didn't have to deal with them again! So, the boss and the complainers combined, you could say, were largely instrumental in us taking off that afternoon in a fifty mile an hour gale.

Needless to say, it was rough from the second we were airborne, something we almost didn't achieve as I watched the port wing avoid scraping the ground by inches. And rather like the incident the previous day with the old 'Vomiting Venus', the passengers were frozen in silence, as the stewardess and I sat there grinning.

We were facing a flight time, if we included the stop we would need for re fuelling, of about seven hours, in what the Captain informed us from his forecast, was likely to be one of the worst storms that year. And because we had no pressurisation we would be flying right through the centre of it!

'You'd better let the passengers know,' he advised me. 'Tell them to remain seated with their safety belts fastened tightly. And Tracy,' he added, turning to the stewardess, 'you had better forget the coffee and sandwiches for that lot...' pointing in the direction of the passengers, 'Just make sure you have plenty of sick bags.'

'What about you and Nick?' she asked, nodding towards the co pilot.

'Leave it for about an hour. We'll be crossing the northern coast of France then and it will be dark, so you'll be able to turn off the lights.'

'Where are we re fuelling?' I asked. 'I was originally routing for Toulouse but with the force of this headwind I've had to change it to Lyon. It's going to be a rough ride.'

'Is it likely to be as bad as this in the Bay of Biscay?' He looked at me curiously. 'It's always rough in that area. But it's nowhere near our routing. Why do you ask?'

'No reason really. It's just that I know some people on a cruise ship who'll be going that way shortly.' I had Mrs Hodgson very much in mind. 'Well, that's one place I would not like to be,' the Captain muttered.

Serve you right, you cow, I thought, as images of her throwing up while whinging, passed through my evil mind.

Tracy and I went through the cabin towards the crew seats at the rear of the plane, glancing at the pale faces of the passengers on the way. No one spoke although one of the elderly women grasped Tracy by the arm and thrust a used sick bag towards her. I got the hell out of the way, it was dangerous territory. Forced to hang on to the edge of the seats as we made our way to the back, it was like riding a bucking bronco. Then the plane chose that precise moment to drop like a stone for a couple of hundred feet, which sent Tracy flying dumping the contents of the sickbag over one very unfortunate man. It certainly didn't help matters when I started to laugh, especially as it coincided with a couple of the passengers screaming as we where hit by a bolt of lightening. It looked scarier than it actually was, but if you had enjoyed a misspent youth as I had, on Blackpool's famous Pleasure Beach, to say nothing of winters in the

Merchant Navy storming through the North Sea, you would be well used to this kind of thing.

I was still chuckling when I reached the back of the plane and almost fell into one of the rear facing crew seats. Tracy had gone back to try and clean up what she could I for one didn't envy her. When she finally joined me, the cabin lights dimmed, and the only sound we could hear was the filling of more sick bags.

'I suppose the crew will want their coffee now,' she complained. 'We're crossing into France. Would you like one, Vincent?'

'Yeah, thanks. That would be nice.'

'You wouldn't like to give me a hand, would you?'

'Sure,' I said, following her into the tiny galley. It consisted of a small sink bordered by stainless steel cupboards on both sides and a space between of no more than two feet in width. 'Have you heard of the "Mile High Club",' she asked innocently as she plugged in the coffee pot.

I shook my head. 'No, I haven't. But then I've only been in the travel industry for a few months. What is it, this club?'

She grinned wickedly. 'Well, to become a member you have to have had sex at least one mile above the earth.'

'Great! How about yourself. Are you a member?'

'No.' She pushed herself against me suggestively. 'But I've always wanted to join.' So there I was, a happily married man, in the centre of a violent storm, high above the ground, being propositioned by a stewardess who must have been out of her mind to even consider sex at a time like this. And this was 1959, for God's sake, an era where all the nice girls were virgins. Fortunately, we were interrupted by a scream from the cabin. One of the old dears had a nosebleed.

'Don't panic,' Tracy said to her sternly. 'It's a nose bleed not a heart attack.' She glared at me is if it was my fault and then ordered me to bring the first aid kit from the galley. I dutifully obliged and we spent the next hour or so mopping up a mixture of blood and vomit in between trying to cope with the air crew's incessant demands for bloody coffee.

'Look, Tracy, you see to the passengers, I'll try to make the coffee.'

'I'm running out of tissue and sick bags,' she complained. Then we'll just have to let them get on with it, won't we?' God knows how long it took me to make it as my wife Pat would tell you, at home I could hardly boil water but I was buggered if I was going to spend any further time watching that lot engaging in a symphony of vomit.

I just managed to make it to the flight deck with the coffee when Tim, our undaunted skipper, informed me in his matter of fact voice that we were about to begin our descent into Lyon. The rain was lashing down and, if anything, the wind was gusting at a higher rate of knots than when we took off from Blackpool.

'Jesus,' I managed to say as I watched the both of them fighting with the plane for control.

'Yes. You had better take a seat.' He gestured to the spare seat in the cabin, and I thought what a privilege to be allowed to sit where I could actually witness the landing. 'Don't worry,' Nick, the co pilot tried to assure me. 'We'll try and get it down in one piece!'

The old wartime spirit I guessed. What they didn't realise was that I had little sense of fear in those days I genuinely believed I was blessed with an innate sense of stupidity, something that was to serve me in good stead in the years ahead.

'Oh gosh!' I remember saying sarcastically, 'aren't we lucky to have you flying the plane.'

'Piss off!'

'Knock it off you two. Nick, keep your mind on the job.' He began to read off the altitude; it seemed to me that the lower we descended the worse the weather became, and for the first time I wondered if I had left my wife any insurance. 'Flaps twenty five degrees,' Nick said, followed shortly by, 'Undercarriage down, flaps at fifty degrees.'

I heard a voice through the radio detailing the runway heading and the wind speed I was sure he said gusting at thirty knots, but I didn't think it was comment.

We came in like a crab, drifting from one side to the other, constantly hit by the crosswind and almost blinded by the rain lashing against the windscreen. We almost missed the runway and it was only due to a last minute correction by the Captain that we hit the deck safely, about three hundred yards further down the concrete than we should have done.

'There,' I said to Nick, 'That wasn't so bad, was it?' For the first time he gave me a grin. 'Next time you can have a go!'

We taxied towards a cluster of huts, which, I was informed was the Lyon Passenger Terminal not much different from Blackpool really. We all squeezed into the one bus, and managed to get soaked going from the bus into the terminal. I was in the process of ordering a coffee in fractured French when the Tannoy announced that the airport was now closed! We were well and truly stranded.

There was no transport to take us into town, and even if there was, no one had any money, at least between the crew and myself, to pay for accommodation.

I chatted briefly to the Captain about the prospects of the weather lifting. He seemed quite relieved that the airport had closed and informed me with profound insight that we would just have to make the best of it until the next day. In the meantime, he and my friend Nick were taking a crew minibus into Lyon centre to arrange a hotel; evidently, without the required rest period they would be out of hours in the morning and we could be stuck here longer still. Tracy was going with them, leaving me with the responsibility for the beaten but not bowed passengers.