Tourist air pioneer retires

Press, 9 January 1986, Page 5

Tourist air pioneer retires

Eric Ewington was always destined for greater things than cleaning aeroplanes. He recalls having difficulty concentrating on the job in his early years as an aircraft cleaner for Phillip and Powis, the British manufacturers of Miles aircraft. “Half the time they would find me trying to give the engineers a hand,’!, he said. Eventually his employers got the message, and Mr Ewington became an improver engineer — a sort of informal apprentice. That was 50 years ago. Next week Mr Ewington will retire as engineering manager for the general aviation division of Mount Cook Line.

During his time with Phillip and Powis, he worked with the aircraft designers, Fred and Blossom Miles, and was a member of the support team which accompanied their aircraft in Kings Cup air races. Mr Ewington also worked on aircraft for Charles Lind-

bergh, the first pilot to fly solo across the Atlantic.

In 1939 he joined Airwork Ltd, which ran flying training schools for the Royal Air Force. Mr Ewington and two friends became the youngest engineers in England approved to certify Air Force aircraft. They were all under the qualifying age of 21.

He spent three years with the Royal Navy Volunteer Reserve as an engineer officer working on Seafires, the naval equivalent of Spitfires.

After the war, he became Airwork’s chief engineer at reserve flying schools in Scotland and north-east England. In 1948 he gained his civil engineer’s “A” and “C” licences for minor maintenance and in 1955 qualified for his major licence to certify overhauls.

The licence was Mr Ewington’s ticket to New Zealand. With £lOO borrowed from his father he brought his family to Queenstown. It was there an old friend, Barrft Topliss, was running

Southern Scenic Air services with Fred “Popeye” Lucas and John Kilian. The trio were keen to put Mr Ewington’s skills to work.

“Thirty years ago New Zealand was 10 years behind the rest of the world, and in a lot of ways that was the attraction,” he said. “When we had a problem we had to nut out some way around it. We had to improvise.” In the days before helicopters he had to devise methods for dropping parcels from an aircraft into remote forests, and for delivering and collecting goods from isolated West Coast whitebaiters.

When Southern Scenic Airservices was taken over by New Zealand Tourist Air Travel, Mr Ewington helped design the company’s Cessna float-planes.

“We started off with amphibious floats, but after three incidents when the pilots left the wheels down we did away with the wheels.” q-

The engineering section also built trolleys to transport aeroplanes on land, and a wharf which was floated at Te Anau.

Another of Mr Ewington’s jobs involved overhauling Widgeon twin-engined flying boats, which he remembers for their “horrendous corrosion.”

Tourist Air Travel was taken over by Mount Cook Airlines. Mr Ewington was chief engineer for the company in Queenstown before being appointed engineering manager for the general aviation division.

His staff are responsible for the maintenance of a fleet of Britten-Norman Islanders, Cessnas, Pilatus Porters, a Twin Otter, and Cessna ski-planes.

They also refuel, do preflight checks and inspect daily the company’s six Hawker-Siddeley 748 passenger aircraft. A big send-off is planned for Mr Ewington in Queenstown next week.