Issue No 22 THE AVIATION HISTORIAN 105
and the company’s long-nosed Reid & Sigrist
Desford, G-AGOS. There was also instruction
and air taxi work, plus a three-month stint flying
P2 in Martin-Baker’s DC-3 G-APML between
Chalgrove in Oxfordshire, Ronaldsway on the
Isle of Man and Aldergrove in Northern Ireland.
She was named Outstanding Woman Pilot,
part of the coveted Sir Alan Cobham Achieve-
ment Award, in 1969, the year she ferried five
Beagle Pups from the UK to the Tehran Aero
Club in Iran. These trips were flown in 11 sectors
over seven days and involved about 30hr of
flying time. From 1970 onwards the other types
of flying dwindled gradually and Janet’s 25-year
ferrying career began in earnest.
... and India
In May 1976 Janet teamed up with legendary
female Air Transport Auxiliary pilot Lettice
Curtis to deliver two Britten-Norman Defenders
to Cochin for the Indian Navy. Women pilots
had deliberately been selected to make the
flights because the aircraft had Indian military
markings, albeit hidden under Fablon strips
on which British registration letters had been
painted. The potential problem was that the
Defenders were to transit Pakistani airspace,
stopping in Karachi at a time when political
tension between the two nations was particularly
high. Had the Fablon peeled off en route to
reveal the true identity of the aircraft, the pilots
were likely to have been arrested; however,
it was reckoned that the Pakistani authorities
might be more lenient with female pilots. In
the event the Fablon remained stuck fast. Janet
flew G-BDJW and the flight, subject to frequent
delays and bad weather, took seven days and
just under 40hr of flying time. The episode is
recorded in a chapter of Lettice’s book, Lettice
Curtis: Her Autobiography (Red Kite, 2004).
More often than not delivery timetables
were dependent on the weather and aircraft
serviceability, but they were not the only causes
of delay. There were target timings: 11 days
from Bembridge to Tokyo for a Britten-Norman
Islander; or 12 days for a Pilatus Porter from
Switzerland to New Zealand, for example. But
clearances and permissions, although arranged
in advance, could bedevil the schedule, together
with the unexpected, such as facilities being
withdrawn without prior warning.
Indian paperwork could also throw a large
spanner in the works. Ahmedabad was one
of the worst places for form-filling. On one
occasion, Janet later recalled, the airport officials
seemed intent on breaking their own record. The
customs officer examined every single bag and
box on the aircraft, including dinghy, control-
lock bag, package of manuals for the customer
etc. Then immigration arrived with more forms,
and the doctor was summoned to deal with
health formalities such as spraying the aircraft,
albeit after it had been sitting on the tarmac for
an hour with the doors open, letting out all the
germs. (It is not unknown for the doctor’s bearer
to spray meticulously from an empty container
— rules is rules.. .) There followed the usual
discussions in the control tower, refuelling and
payment in US$ travellers’ cheques and heaps of
accompanying “bumph”.Janet and her longtime work colleague and mentor Peter Nock at the
Beechcraft factory at Wichita, Kansas, preparing to make the delivery
flight of Queen Air 80 G-ASKM to the UK in the summer of 1963. Nock,
the founder of West London Air Charter Ltd, and Ferguson would work
together for more than three decades.