Who is George - and Where Were the Red Arrows?

This edited extract from my second book, covering the Red Arrows' arrival in Durban in 1995, highlights the fact that PROs do not always have it their own way!

For a stunned moment I couldn't think who George was and then I remembered, just in time, that it is a town not a person!

I left Cape Town ahead of the Red Arrows, this time on an early morning two-hour flight by South African Airways to Durban. Shortly after arriving at my hotel I was taken to the Presidential Suite in the splendid rugby ground and 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 the interview went well. I agreed to do a second television interview, this one especially for the Durban area, later in the day, just before the Red Arrows were due to arrive. That was when the trouble started. The interviewer's very first question on that second TV interview at Durban had me momentarily stumped.

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

For a stunned moment I couldn't think who George was and then I remembered that it is a town not a person! Unbeknown to me, a well-meaning PRO in the South African Air Force had told the media a couple of days earlier 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 not have enough fuel to do it anyway. I was told that virtually the entire population of each town had stopped working to throng the streets, looking in vain for the Red Arrows. There were a lot of disappointed and angry citizens. It was not one of my more comfortable interviews but fortunately this one was being recorded so I was able to call for a short editing break. Because I had no idea that it had been announced that there would be a display over George and I could not get hold of anyone at South African Air Force HQ on the telephone, when the interview resumed I was forced to explain that I could not explain why the good citizens of the two towns had been told to look out for the Red Arrows. I had to add, rather lamely, that I had no knowledge of any such plans.

The display-that-never-was created so much ill feeling that it almost cancelled out all the beneficial PR the Team had earned. The Port Elizabeth Herald printed a scathing report under the headline: ‘Missing the Target.’ The article started off: 'Never in the history of British aviation have so many been disappointed by so few, Winston Churchill might have said. 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, quite wrongly, that I had apologised profusely for the fiasco. It continued, ‘Tony Cunnane, the Team's PRO 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 heard some time later, from a reliable South African media source, that the top echelons of the SAAF were extremely miffed that the Red Arrows displays at Waterkloof (Pretoria) 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 landed 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 incantations in the fascinating Zulu language, which is full of tongue clicks, was completely unintelligible by the Red Arrows pilots and groundcrew. 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, Team Leader Squadron Leader 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 Reds display over Durban on 11 October was centred on the splendid beach and watched by an enormous crowd and caused the nearby civil airport to be closed for 20 minutes. The Team Manager’s commentary, relayed over an extensive 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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