Airline’s new chief pilot

Press, 12 November 1981, Page 10

Airline’s new chief pilot

Flying one of the first mountain ski-planes is a far cry from the present flights of the Mount Cook Line's new chief pilot. Captain John Evans, of Christchurch. The appointment of Captain Evans, aged 48. as chief pilot of the airline division was announced yesterday. The airline's longest-s'erv-ing pilot said that he would like to do without the title but that the extra responsibility probably had to come with his 18.000 flying hours. “It is one of those jobs that someone has got to do." he said. Flying has been his life for the last 25 years; but the modern Friendships and Hawker Siddeley 748 s are a big change from the days when he Hew one of the first under-powered Auster skiplanes in unpredictable terrain. and was never caught without a tool-box for running repairs.

"It was pretty experimental." he said. One experience many people have read about took place on the Bonar Glacier in 1958. Captain Evans was flying in three climbers to

assemble hut-building supplies which had been dropped by parachute. The light was poor and the Auster made a heavv landing. A weakened ski broke on crusted snow and the plane flipped over, leaving the party no choice but to rope together and walk off the mountain. Captain Evans returned with a salvage party which spent 10 days cut off by “atrocious" weather repairing the plane. Eventually the party ran out of food and had to retreat down the mountain again. He returned w’hen the weather cleared and managed to take off from the cracking snowfield. Four weeks later Captain Evans ran into a repeat performance flying supplies to the head of the Fox Glacier. Another ski folded on landing and he spent a day refitting a replacement undercarriage dropped from

a second plane. “We have to be fairly good at everything," he sa'id. I n those pioneering davs pilots had to repair 'aircraft change tyres, peg out landing fields, and clear stones from airstrips. Ironically the Bonar Glacier incident was re-en-acted last month during filming for a television documentary on mountain sport flying. Captain Evans was asked to fly back to the site for the benefit of the cameras and the skiplane was grounded for an hour. “We got stuck and had a performance getting out," he said. Boats take up most of his spare time. Captain Evans is building a 16.5 m keeler in his backyard to sail when he retires in a few years time. “After flying up and down the country for 30 years it is going to be hard’ to settle down," he said.