How Maurice Flanagan socked it to ’em

by Yeoh Siew Hoon

I remember my first flight well. I was 17 years old and flying from Penang to Singapore, on one of those big city adventures that small island girls dream about.

I think I was too excited to be afraid. I was filled with wide-eyed wonder at the thought of how this metal tube could actually take off and then stay up there among the clouds.

I wanted to reach out and touch the clouds. And in my mind’s eye, I did.

I think I got hooked then on the idea of flight and since then, I have flown countless miles on countless types of aircraft.

I have landed on water planes in Vancouver and ski planes in Switzerland and New Zealand. I have gone by helicopter into remote parts of Sarawak. I have been part of air safaris in Southern Africa.

I have had precarious landings in single-engined aircraft in Solomon Islands, Vanuatu and Langkawi.

I have survived typhoons and storms in Cessnas in northern Thailand and Vietnam. I have island-hopped my way from Honolulu to Hong Kong through the Pacific islands, on a single-engined Piper Malibu.

These are the journeys I remember, not the mainstream commercial flights that today bus hundreds and hundreds of us around the globe like the cattle they treat us as.

All these memories came to mind when I was sitting next to Maurice Flanagan, who was honoured with a Legends award at the recent CAPA Aviation Awards of Excellence.

Maurice Flanagan, Legend, shares his stories with Siew Hoon. Photo courtesy of CAPA

With a career spanning nearly 50 years, the executive vice chairman of Emirates Airlines has seen more than a few things in his life and I could see his eyes sparkle with mischief and remembered joy as he spoke about the past.

He became a navigator in the airforce after university at a time, he said, “when they needed brains on the flight, now it’s all computerised”.

He then joined BOAC which, after the war, he said, stood for “Bastards Overseas Avoiding Conscription”.

He was also quite candid about how he got his first posting to Lima, Peru. He told his bosses he could speak Spanish. On the flight over there, he boned up on his Spanish and learnt a line which, when translated, went, “I like my socks with zip fasteners.” He got the job.

These days, if an executive told a white lie like Flanagan did, he would have been out on his behind faster than you can say A380.

As I conversed with him, I found myself transported back to a time when I too was in love with the idea of flight and the romance of the idea.

Lim Kim Hai, chairman of Australia’s Regional Express, which won CAPA’s Regional Airline of the Year, brought me abruptly back to earth though. He said he would not have entered the airline business if he had known what a disaster it was.

“Airlines are run by men with big egos who like fancy toys,” he said. “They don’t run it like a business.”

Of course, I had to ask him what car he drove. His reply, “A 30-year-old Mercedes is one of the cars I drive.”

I then asked him why he named his airline REX. Was it after his dog?

“I felt Australians would like it, because they all call their dog Rex.”

For all his digs at the airline business, I think secretly, Kim Hai is as in love with the idea of flight as Flanagan is.

Me, having been grounded now for nearly six weeks, I will approach my next flight with the same wide-eyed wonder I did all those years ago. The magic of being transported to another plane, another space, never goes away, no matter how you get there.

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