The Seneca III was a recent acquisition by my client ‘ME’ and he had a heavy schedule of winter flying planned which included this trip, departing Fowlmere to Southend (for Customs), then to Dortmund to collect client’s Father ‘Bodo’, on to Beauvais for a meeting and then to Toussus le Noble for overnight stay. Christine was with us as there were some ‘dead heading’ legs which she could fly and get some useful P1 experience.
After lunch at the aeroport restaurant at Toussus we departed to Dortmund. Normally we would route to Marl but it was closed due to snow. About 1hr into the flight ‘Bodo’ announced he needed a ‘pee’. By now we were almost halfway to Dortmund which was being kept open by snow ploughs. ME was flying, me beside him and Christine was in the back with Bodo. Bodo took off his shoe and waved it at us…. Fortunately, ME found a plastic bag! As we taxied to the GAT at Dortmund, Bodo’s driver was waiting with the car. We opened the aft door and Bodo passed him a bag. I think the driver thought it was one of those fairground goldfish bags.
We spent the night at the factory (there was an apartment building with factory ‘behind’). Bodo had never spoken to me in English and it was quite a surprise to see him being interviewed on TV in English. I said to him that all the times I had met him and struggled to communicate he had never answered in English, he simply said he found English difficult and preferred to speak German!
We flew direct to Humberside the next day and dropped ME off and Christine flew back towards Fowlmere. I say ‘towards’ because heavy snow had affected the runway and the weather was poor and we ended up flying an SRA (Surveillance Radar Approach) down to .5nm into Cambridge and left the aircraft there.
Lesson learnt: if client has a ‘wet’ lunch make sure they have a toilet visit before boarding, carry a bottle or ‘Little John’ (with ‘Lady Jane’ adapter) on ‘trips’!