JERSEY HOLIDAY 1961 IN OUR ILL FATED DAKOTA G-AMSW

1961 family holiday in Jersey at the Biarritz Hotel, St Brelades Bay. A beautiful Hotel run by the Methodist Church. First you will see our holiday then 5 mins into the film my Uncle filmed us leaving in the ill fated Derby Airways Dakota at Jersey Airport on our way home to Derby Airport. With me waving goodbye through the planes window. Little did we know that the same plane and the same crew a few weeks later crashed into the Pyrenees Mountains. Not one of the 34 on board survived including the crew. The film shows the plane in all its operational glory and acts as a reminder to us of the holiday makers and crew that tragically lost their lives.

The Dakota G-AMSW fate can be read in more detail on this link -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1961_Der...

Also when we flew to Jersey in another Dakota on that same holiday it landed with a bump and then took off again and made another approach to Jersey Airport. Unknown to us at the time the plane had a suspected flat Tyre!

Just to add to this on another holiday to Jersey we flew back in a British Midland "Argonaut" (much bigger than a Dakota) Its name was Hotel Golf. We had a very bad landing causing a loud bang in the plane that shocked us all and made some passengers sick but we were told by the hostess it was just the toilet seat falling down! Just a few days later the same plane crashed in Stockport due to fuel starvation, just a few miles short of Manchester Airport. A friend of mine helped to pull 12 people out of the crashed plane before it caught fire having landed on an electrical sub station. There were no other survivors.

The Argonaut's fate can be read in more detail on these links -
www.casa.gov.au/fsa/2007/aug/46-49.pdf
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stockpor...