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| MY LIFE IN THAILAND | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| In 1961 I was stationed in Thailand by SAS to fly for Thai Airways International the first jet aircraft in their fleet, the CV.990 Convair Coronado. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| My wife and two of our daughters moved with me, whilst our eldest daughter Marianne, stayed in Denmark to continue her education in a Danish School. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Thai rented this house on Soi 44 Sukhumvit Road for us where we stayed for almost two years. The house is still there but is now surrounded by many buildings. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Here we are on the terrace of the house with our eldest daughter on vacation from Denmark in 1961. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Thai paid for our two daughters Patricia 11 years and Birgitte 9 years old to attend the PNEU School in Bangkok. They were driven to school by our driver in a red VW car supplied by Thai. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Thai supplied a VW car, a driver, a cook, a wash girl, a house maid and a gardener. Thai also paid for our membership of the Royal Bangkok Sports Club, the most prestegious Club in Bangkok, of which I am still a life time member where there is a golf club, swimming pool tennis courts and all facilities. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| This is our gardener on the entrance drive to the house. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Here we see the cook, the wash girl and the house maid on the drive to the house | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| We were seven SAS cockpit crews stationed in Bangkok to fly the Coronado. The aircraft arrived in Bangkok as an SAS flight from Copenhagen to Bangkok via Rome & Karachi. We took over the flight in SAS uniforms and flew on to Manila and Tokyo as an SAS flight. Next day we changed to Thai uniforms and flew as a Thai flight from Tokyo to Taipei, Hongkong, and on to Bangkok. The aircraft then stayed and flew flights to Singapore and Kuala Lumpur and back to Tokyo via Bangkok, Hongkong and Taipei, and back again. On the fifth day it ended in Tokyo and next day we put on SAS uniforms and flew as SAS from Tokyo to Manila and Bangkok where the SAS crew took over and flew back to Copenhagen via Karachi and Rome. |
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| During a flight from Hongkong to Bangkok in 1962 I made the fastest flight on that route of only 1 hour and 54 minutes from take off to landing. This record has never been challenged since as todays flights take around two hours 15 minutes. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| The Coronado was a four engined jet with only room for 100 passengers. It was, and still is, the fastest commenrcial jet aircraft with a never exceed speed of Mach 0.92. Landing speed over the fence at maximum landing weight was 175 knots. Though more like a jet fighter than a commercial aircraft, the crew loved to fly it. However, it proved too expensive for both Thai and SAS to operate economically and was replaced by the SE-210 Caravelle at the end of 1962. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| I returned to SAS as Manager of Flight Procedures, and in this capacity I was elected a member of the International Air Transport Association (IATA) South East Asia Technical Panel. I was therefore often in Thailand for meetings and flew some of the first Trans Asian Express flights from Copenhagen to Bangkok via the USSR to begin with, stop over in Tashkent. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| I was elected Chairman of the Asia/Pacific Technical Panel in 1972 and headed the IATA Delegation to the First ICAO Asia/Pacific and Middle East Regional Air Navigation Conference in Honolulu for four weeks in 1973. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| In 1980 IATA asked me to take over the IATA Regional Technical Office for the Asia/Pacific Region in Bangkok. SAS supported this appointment and kindly granted me an early retirement in January 1980 when I moved to Bangkok with my wife for the second time. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| The Asia/Pacific Region of IATA is the largest of the IATA regions covering an area from Pakistan over the Eastern part of the USSR, China, Japan and on to the West Coast of the USA and Australia and New Zealand in the South. The office was moved from Australia to Bangkok in 1960 to be close to the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) whose Asia/Pacific Office had just moved there from Australia also. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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