In June I did my last instructional flight on a 747-400 with SIA, training a new recruit from Uganda. Pilot training in Singapore Airlines is serious business; the standards are high and the system runs on well-oiled wheels that optimise professionalism. I was a part of that team and was privileged to have such twilights when I closed chapters as a pilot. It’s been a very long journey of teaching people to fly, from my primeval beginnings in the early seventies to the last landing at Changi.
My first job as a flying instructor was on a little grass field south of Colombo where the old Ratmalana Airport was and the craft was a bi-plane, a DH-82, better known as a Tiger Moth. The pay was great, 10 rupees an hour and most days I did 6-7 breadwinners that paid me sixty to seventy rupee which in today’s context equates to one Singapore dollar. To supplement this I flew and dropped flowers at burials that netted 50 rupees per trip. It’s not the money; it never was, it was the joy of flying, sitting in an open cockpit aeroplane wearing an old leather helmet and goggles and teaching fledglings the rudiments of staying aloft safe. Years have rolled and of the Baron Richthofens I taught to fly, some became Chief Pilots and Directors of Flight Operations whilst others command Big Jet Aeroplanes with Sri Lankan Airlines and Jet Airways, flying across continents. Most ended as Training Captains teaching their own brood to punch holes in the sky, the same way I taught them a long time ago, from the grass patch at Ratmalana in a very different world.
I remember once we got grounded, the wooden propeller of our beloved Tiger Moth cracked. No propeller, no flying, one had to go to the moon to get a replacement. We all had funeral faces and lamented at the loss till one bright engineering apprentice came up with a brilliant idea. The Old Airport had a wooden propeller for display under its arches at the entry point. Could be a Tiger Moth prop? Yes it was and in no time the switch was made, the chipped one went on display and the wall ornament was rotating smoothly on the Gypsy Major engine and biting into the air to roll our Tiger Moth on yet another take-off along the grass strip.
Years later, the beloved Old Lady lost its ability to fly for the lack of spare parts and rotted a while and was lost in hanger junk. I took the propeller home and it sits 
today pasted on my study wall, the old sun burnt arms of wood embracing the world and its edges of brass in dull shine as if to say “once I too was gleaming.”
At times I sit and stare at this relic and reminisce, recalling the places I flew and the faces who sat behind me, all adding up to memories that make me so rich. I could close my eyes and feel the wind on my face, caressing with loving care and the azure sky opening to me with cartoon clouds laughing and waving.
Such was my beginning in this wonderful world of teaching people to fly. At the base of it all, it’s the same – be it the ancient Tiger Moth or the high tech colossal 747, the essence is one man sharing his knowledge with another on how to be safe in the sky.
I’ve been truly blessed in aviation. I’ve been a sky tramp going from rags to riches and walked away from a jumbo jet with “myself” intact. Some pilots do dream of what I flew, of Tiger Moths and open cockpits and blue skies above.
As for me, it was all real, I had’em.
Capt Elmo Jayawardena
A few years ago I met Brian Christy, less hair on the head more flesh in the middle. He is now a top maintenance engineer in the Middle East. We both laughed and agreed it’s a pity they don’t have big Rolls Royce engines hanging on the walls of Dubai International Airport.