Embarrassing live interview in Durban - Tony Cunnane's Life and Times

A surprise arrival at Capetown was the British Airways ‘City of Lincoln’ Boeing 747-400 GBNLT on a scheduled service bearing the Scampton Station Commander, Group Captain Chris Burwell. After Cape Town everyone started to relax knowing that they were, in effect, starting the long journey home. First there was a low level transit around the Cape of Good Hope and Cape Agulhas en route to Durban.

Once again I flew ahead of the Team, this time an early morning two-hour flight to Durban. Shortly after arriving at my hotel I was taken to the Presidential Suite in the splendid Rugby ground to gave a live interview on late Breakfast Television, seen throughout the Republic. Quite why the interview was transmitted from the Presidential Suite was not made clear to me but I think the interview went well. I agreed to return for another television interview, especially for the Durban area, later in the day and that was when the trouble started. A well-meaning PRO in the South African Air Force had told the media that the Red Arrows would perform over the towns of George and Port Elizabeth on the low level transit flight from Cape Town to Durban. Unfortunately, the Red Arrows had no such intention – they had not been asked to do so nor did they have enough fuel to do it anyway. Virtually the entire population of each town stopped working to throng the streets, looking in vain for the Red Arrows. There were a lot of disappointed and angry citizens. I was trapped in the middle of the second TV interview at Durban when the news broke.

"It had been announced that the Red Arrows were going to fly over George at midday,’ asked the interviewer. ‘Why didn’t they do it?"

For a stunned moment I could not think who George was and then I remembered, just in time, that it is a town not a person! Not one of my more comfortable interviews but fortunately this one was being recorded. At the time I had no idea that it had been announced that there would be a display over George so I had to make some quick telephone calls before I was able to resume that interview.

The confusion over the display-that-never-was created so much ill feeling that it almost cancelled out all the beneficial PR. The Port Elizabeth Herald printed a scathing report headed ‘Missing the Target.’ Never in the history of British aviation have so many been disappointed by so few, Winston Churchill might have said, according to that newspaper. It continued, ‘The Red Arrows appeared for only a few flashing seconds and so undid much of the good work of the Queen’s visit to the city last March. Let us hope that they have learned from this debacle and that in future they stick to their schedule and their promises.’

The following day the same newspaper stated that I "had apologised profusely for the fiasco." It continued, "Tony Cunnane said that, battling in the face of strong coastal winds and flying at sea level which uses up more fuel, the Red Arrows had no choice but to take the shortest possible route to East London." In fact I never spoke to that newspaper. Having unilaterally decided that it was the Red Arrows at fault, the media were not prepared to make any apologies, particularly since they would have had to lay the blame on their own air force. I did hear some time later, from a reliable South African source, that the top echelons of the SAAF were extremely miffed that the Red Arrows displays at Waterkloof had almost entirely eclipsed the displays by SAAF aircraft. Certainly the Red Arrows got more publicity in the media than all the rest of the participants put together.

When the Team arrived at Durban after refuelling at East London en route someone, but certainly not I, had arranged for them to be met and blessed by Phemelele Ngcongo, a sangoma, which is a polite word for female witch doctor. The sangoma’s name in the strange Zulu language, which is full of tongue clicks, was completely unpronounceable by the Brits. The ceremony, which lasted about three minutes but seemed a lot longer, bemused the Red Arrows and the airport workers and media alike but it provided some unusual pictures for the media. During the subsequent press conference, John Rands was quoted in the Durban Mercury as saying that ‘a stable extrovert with an appetite for adrenaline and a capacity for beer is what makes a good fighter pilot.’

The display over Durban was centred on the splendid beach and watched by an enormous crowd and caused the nearby civil airport to be closed down for 20 minutes. The Team Manager’s commentary, relayed over a public address system, was heard by tens of thousands of people along several miles of the promenade. The following day was a rare day off, spoilt somewhat because of a temperature of 42 degrees Celsius, a 40 mph wind blowing like a furnace, and humidity of almost 100%.

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