Sextant to Sat Nav. Part 2.

Peter Griffiths


Region:
South East
Notice Period:
Emergency (maybe less than one week's notice)
Type:
Hobby
Fee:
Paid: £80-£150, depending on size of audience and distance to travel.
Category:
History
Updated:
22nd May 2023

The second half of my story of a career in aviation from navigating with a compass, map, sextant and a fair degree of hope, to the modern age of Sat Nav and GPS, accurate to a few feet.

Views: 1175 | Enquiries: 3

About Peter Griffiths

I started flying with BOAC in 1967, on B707s, both as a Pilot and Navigator. I finished a few years ago, flying executive jets for the rich and infamous. I thus ran the full gamut from "steam driven" early jets, navigating by map, compass and sextant, to highly sophisticated, computer driven aircraft, accurate to within a couple of feet. The Captains I flew with initially had either been with Imperial Airways before the war or were pilots during. The stories you may have heard, of the likeness of Captains in those days to minor deities, has not been exaggerated. I left BOAC in 1975 and then spent 29 years with Cathay Pacific in Hong Kong, rising to Fleet Manager B747, managing 19 aircraft whilst also checking and training other pilots and carrying out test flight on our fleet. During that time I evacuated people from China, after Tiananmen Square and flew freighters during the first Gulf War. After Cathay, I flew executive jets and came to realise that the rich are indeed different I have a fund of informative, historical and amusing stories and am happy to take questions afterwards.


Send a message to the speaker

If you are interested in this talk and wish to contact the speaker, please complete the following form:

 
Please provide your contact name
 
Please provide the name of your group
 
Your phone number so that the speaker can contact you
 
Your email address so that the speaker can contact you
 
Give details about the event, time of day and location
Prove you are human please.
Use the slider to drag the puzzle so that the top and bottom are aligned
 

Site Search

Search across all speakers, topics and tags. Put your search term in the box and press enter or hit search

Use quotes around exact multiple word searches, eg "winston churchill".