Listen free for 30 days
Listen with offer
-
Secrets from the Cockpit
- Pilots Behaving Badly and Other Flying Stories
- Narrated by: Richard Wright-Firth
- Length: 7 hrs and 24 mins
Failed to add items
Add to basket failed.
Add to wishlist failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Adding to library failed
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
Secrets from the Cockpit
Buy Now for £14.99
No valid payment method on file.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
Listeners also enjoyed...
Summary
Robert Schapiro always wanted to fly. Challenging anti-Semitic bullying, mockery, and fierce rivalry, he realised his dream by earning his wings in the South African Air Force and going on to command C-47 Dakotas in the Border War.
He joined South African Airways (SAA) in 1979, soon learning it was a time when SAA crews were dominated by the "Royal Family" - captains who thought themselves above the rules and who spent time overseas on drinking binges or coaxing air hostesses to be their "airline wives".
When sanctions forced SAA to cut back on its routes, he was seconded to Japan’s Nippon Cargo Airlines, routinely flying between New York and Tokyo and grappling with often-hilarious cultural misunderstandings as he adapted to a Japanese style of operations. Schapiro is disarmingly frank about life as an international pilot. He divulges near misses, emergency landings, navigation errors, passenger shenanigans (seat sex, anyone?), how pilots control rowdy travellers and absorbing detail about the technique of flying different aircraft types.
Uplifting and humorous, his memoir offers a rare slice of aviation history.
Critic reviews
"A witty, sometimes heart-stopping, and always engrossing path from 'boy pilot' to elite aviator." (Jaundiced Eye columnist, William Saunderson-Meyer)