Aviation Photo #0402150 Douglas DC-8-61CF - Saber Air of Singapore

I flew this aircraft for about one year (1972) for Saber Air and was based in Singapore. It was a great adventure and we had some exciting times including a three engine ferry from Bahrain to Paris Le Bourget, almost landing on a taxiway in Athens, a snake on the aircraft, all the cabin crew getting high from the dope smoking going on in the cabin, being thrown out of the Sheik of Bahrain's weekly crew party because one of our pilots got a bit drunk and bit one of the local dignitary's German girlfriend on the bum thereby getting us all expelled and classified "per sonna non grata" for about three months, ending up about 75 miles off track enroute from Bombay to Bahrain in the dead of night due to all four flight deck crew taking crew rest which required, upon full crew attendance, some major bullshitting to Sharjah and some greatly enhanced cruise improvements to arrive on radar pickup in reasonable time, chatting up Mary Ann Faithfull to no avail and managing to get officialy lost enroute due to an unexpected fuel stop in Stuttgart which was somehow not communicated to Gatwick flight ops and they were about to declare a major disaster when the aircraft finally pitched up. It was truly a blast.

OMG! I flew on this a number of times from boarding school in London back home to Singapore and back. Flights often overflew planned stops because of favourable weather. One flight I was on (with my little brother) had to put down in Stuttgart for fuel (as mentioned above) and I recall we were on the ground for ages, with the aircraft surrounded by a number of armed personnel and there was some argument about paying form the fuel (AFAIK), which added to our stop there. What a very small world it is!