Living The Dream, Continued

Non-Fiction

Pages: 212 Ratings:

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This is the continued story of my life of adventures, encompassing my accident-prone childhood, my teens, when Police chased me for nothing more than being the only car on the road in the sleepy town of Chepstow at three in the morning, the sadness of losing my alcoholic dad, then years later, my mum after nursing her in her final days. Alongside this unfolds the adventures of working on and flying aircraft with the extraordinary people I’ve met and trained on my journey. The field mice in my water tank, stopping water coming out of the taps and the two rats- one dead and powdery in the nose undercarriage bay, the other running around the Boeing 707, eating into the water pipes.

There are the stories too about the pilot friends I’ve sadly lost. Then the story of the Royal Brunei Boeing 757 that was banging and yawing all the way back from Kuwait and the really cool captain, who said to me as I entered the cockpit, “Eng. It wasn’t this bad when we flew into Kuwait!” Then the time I flew with instructor Rob in a Thruster aircraft that went down like a Stuka.

Austin James was born in a sleepy town in Wales. He overcame polio at age two with no more than a secondary education and without much prospect of employment in the area. He travelled across the newly built Severn Bridge opened in 1969 to an apprenticeship on Concorde, at Filton, before moving on to a twenty-two-year career with British Airways, London, another difficult move, then becoming Chief Flying Instructor for Cloud Base Aviation, a company he set up, over the past 36 years. He tells of the interesting stories and pitfalls that come with that life of adventure.