KLM – Photography, aviation and flight simulation

Nice - Côte d'Azur airport in France in 1965 on an aviation postcard — Nice – Côte d’Azur airport in France in 1965 on an aviation postcard

Here is a photo of an aviation postcard representing the Nice – Côte d’Azur airport in 1965. It is part of a collection that you can view on the present web site, under the link :

People in aviation postcards

Its title is : « Au soleil de la Côte d’Azur, Nice – vue aérienne de l’aéroport » which translates into « Under the Côte d’Azur, Nice sun – aerial view of the airport ». It is a postcard that was mailed on September 19th 1965. You can see two aircrafts belonging respectively to Air France (Caravelle) and KLM. It was a time where security at airports was minimal and when people did not expect that at any moment an unstable person would transform into a terrorist and attack innocents in public places, like what happened two days ago in Nice.

The author writes : « […] Nous quittons Nice ce soir pour St-Malo et nous y resterons quelques jours » which translates into « […] We are leaving Nice tonight heading to St-Malo where we will spend few days ». Having been to St-Malo myself in 1978, I take the opportunity to post a photo of that region dating from that period, just to show the beauty of France and encourage people to continue to travel in that country and continue to benefit from its diversified countryside.

We returned in France in 2013 and some of the pictures that were taken during that time are posted in the present website, under the link :

France

My thoughts go out to the French people.

(Precedent story: a kitchen used as a navigation aid to aviation)

Cockpit and crew view of a KLM B747 on a night flight from Montreal to Amsterdam (EHAM) . The picture was taken while the aircraft was mid-point over the Atlantic ocean, in 1983.

There was a time when it was very simple to visit the cockpit of an aircraft in flight. A request was made to the stewardess, who then coordinated with the captain. Even during this period though, several companies forbade those visits when the plane was over the ocean.

In 1983, during a journey from Montreal towards Holland, I decided to take a chance and ask the on-board staff the dreaded question, hoping to be able to take a picture of the cockpit.

The flight was being made on a KLM Boeing B747. In the middle of the night, while the plane had been at cruising altitude for several hours and most of the passengers were asleep, I discreetly asked the flight attendant the authorization to visit the cockpit. Naturally, she refused. I tried again, telling her that I was working as a flight service specialist (FSS) for Transport Canada in Inukjuak, and that I regularly talked with KLM to provide air traffic services. To dissipate any doubts, I finally gave her the KLM call-signs that I was dealing with over Northern Quebec.

She agreed to deliver my request and, twenty minutes later, I was told: “come with me but pay attention not to wake the first class passengers installed near the spiral staircase which leads to the cockpit “. As I entered the cockpit, the captain turned around, greeted me while he crunched in an apple and returned to his work. Everything was quiet in the cockpit and we could hear a continual light whistling caused by the air friction.

After a short discussion with the crew, I asked both pilots and the flight engineer to close their eyes a short moment while I took a photo with flash with my Pentax KX. A photo impossible to take today, under the same circumstances, due to higher security standards.

And, since I started my annual holidays by visiting a cockpit, I thought it would also be interesting, once in Holland, to visit the famous miniature world of Madurodam, so as not to stay away too long from the aviation world…

The miniature world of Madurodam, Holland 1983

For more real life stories of a FSS in Inukjuak, click on the following link: Flight service specialist (FSS) in Inukjuak