Capt Berry debuts as Trip Coordinator for Festive Fly Out

So for my debut fly out I thought I’d start with somewhere I know and love which is Oakley Hall Hotel. I’ve been going on about it for ages and have been taking students to do their first practical application for confined area there for a while and they have always been so very welcoming to helicopters and to me as I’ve been there around 20 times now.

During a recent trip with Capt. Langdon we were a bit peckish and as we usually only had a coffee we decided let’s have some cakes and they brought out these incredible cakes and they were phenomenal, I mean they were really really good, so I ask where they came from.  And that’s when I found out they did afternoon tea as we had been given the leftovers! I thought this would be a fantastic place to come with students for a festive fly out. So that’s exactly what I did.

As ever our trips are dependent on the weather (especially recently) but on Wednesday 7th we were blessed,  little bit low cloud in the morning but that soon burned away turning into a gorgeous, bright (if a little chilly) day. We lifted around 10am , down the Lee Valley through Central London and the lesser travelled H3 Heli Lane which goes to the south of Heathrow because not a lot of students would’ve done that. Over Richmond Park, Thorpe Park, Ascot Racecourse and then leaving the zone south of Bracknell. At that point I decided we’d try our luck and request MATZ overhead and we were allowed to go overhead RAF Odiham to see if we could see any chinooks…  I was like yeah we might see some on the ground but I didn’t dream we’d see one in the air. But of course Paul and his amazing timing just behind me got to basically fly level with one (that man’s timing being so perfect it’s infuriating).

We touched down in a beautiful great big open field at Oakley Hall Hotel. It’s a really, really nice venue, super friendly on arrival as always. They sat us down and served us a wonderfully festive afternoon tea! The cakes did not disappoint even the dairy free options for Student Beth and I were delicious. We ate our fill and once we were all completely stuffed it was back to the helis…

On departure Paul decided to go via RAF Odiham again and saw a chinook AGAIN whereas Capt. page and I went around and over the top of Heathrow and both helis landed almost simultaneously back at Elstree and after all that food roughly the same weight as we had left!

It was just the most perfect day

by Capt. James Berry