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Douglas McLeod Baynes B49
At 18, he applied for a short-service commission with the Royal Navy. After 6 months of basic naval officer training, he started flying training at RAF Syerston on the Percival Prentice in February 1951. Onto the Harvard and then Supermarine Seafire and Fairey Firefly for advanced training. His first operational aircraft was the Hawker Sea Fury in which he saw action in Korea with 801 Squadron on HMS Glory from September 1952. In 1953, he joined 804 squadron at Lossiemouth under the command of Eric (Winkle) Brown and converted onto his first jet, the Hawker Sea Hawk. He had a short spell with the RAF for night fighter training on the Meteor and then to 892 Squadron at Yeovilton on the DH Sea Venom. There was a little more action with the Sea Venom on HMS Eagle during the Suez crisis in late 1956. Other types flown at various times were the Grumman Avenger and DH Vampire.
He left the Navy at the end of his 8-year Commission in November 1957 and joined BEA on the Douglas DC3 Dakota initially at Heathrow and then on to Gatwick for the Channel Island routes. In 1959, he converted onto the Vickers Viscount and in March 1963 onto the Comet 4B. He moved to the Vickers Vanguard/Merchantman in 1969 for his first Command. In 1975, he joined the BALPA Concorde evaluation team and flew the pre-production Concorde 101 G-AXDN (Now at Duxford) on a few flights, one supersonic over the Bay of Biscay culminating with a first Concorde landing at Filton with a very calm Brian Trubshaw, arms folded alongside. He moved into the training field on the Merchantman and remained a base training Captain throughout his time on the Trident 3 and his last type with BA, the 737-200.
On reaching 50 in 1982, he took a voluntary severance package from BA and moved to Hong Kong as a Flight Ops Inspector with the HK CAD and put the Tristar and 747 on his licence although with his short-haul background, he primarily concentrated on Dragonair's start up with the 737. In late 1986, he returned to the UK and was very involved base training with the start-up of Inter European Airways at Cardiff on the 737-300 where he continued until reaching the then mandatory retirement age of 60 in 1992. After three years conducting simulator training at Gatwick with BCAL Flight training on HS125 biz jets, the retirement age rule changed to 65 so he went back to flying by joining EasyJet in their very early days when they had just two 737s operating on Air Foyle's AOC. His last flight was a day before his 65th Birthday on 3rd March 1997 with 15,563 hours in his log book.
His wife Celia pre-deceased him in 2013 but he leaves behind 3 children and 4 grandchildren.
