Michael Crymble, who now owns Mandeville Aerodrome in Southland, previously flew VIPs around the world during a career in the Royal Air Force and as a pilot of private jets.
At Warbirds Over Wānaka at the weekend, he spoke fondly of his time flying the rich and famous, but said an incident with Andrew could have ended his career as a military officer.
While preparing to fly the former royal and his golf bag from London to Scotland on a 120-seat jet airliner, Mr Crymble had to be restrained by a colleague when a joke from his royal passenger at the expense of his crew crossed the line.
‘‘Normally the royals get on at the back of the airplane with their own steps into the royal cabin.
‘‘The crew, press secretaries, the rubbish, come to the front steps, the royals and the VIPs always go to the back.
‘‘Andrew decided to break protocol, coming up the front steps dressed in civvies and straight into my crew’s galley area.
“A call of ‘royal passenger coming forward’ was the only warning we got, so there was a bit of a panic.’’
At the time, Andrew was a naval senior officer and a helicopter pilot, so was familiar with the maps and charts the Royal Air Force used.
“He was at the front of the plane, making what he considered to be humorous small talk to my crew on the basis of the long-standing rivalry between the navy and the RAF.’’
Andrew then reached into the library and pulled out a book he recognised, as a military pilot, and saw it was one day out of date, Mr Crymble said.
‘‘He went, ‘oh bloody air force, can't even keep their documents up to date’ and then just tossed it on to the galley table.
‘‘I was in the cockpit about 3m away and I heard everything that was going on and I remember thinking, ‘enough’.
‘‘This man is mocking the RAF in front of my crew and he's just accused my squadron of unprofessional behaviour.’’
‘‘My colleague in the other seat blocked me and just said quite rightly, ‘it's not worth it’.’’
After the flight Mr Crymble was asked by his colleague what he was going to do.
‘‘I said that I was going to say, ‘good morning Your Royal Highness, are we travelling today as a member of the Royal Family, or are we travelling today as a naval officer?’
‘‘If he'd said he was travelling as a royal, I would have said, ‘sir, please would you kindly go back to the rear cabin, so that my crew can finish their preparations’.
‘‘If he’d said ‘I'm travelling as a naval officer’ ... I was going to say, as the commander of the aircraft, ‘then get the f... off my airplane.’
The way former prince and friend of convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, behaved, did not endear him to the air force.
‘‘Long before the public knew about it, we all thought of him as a pretty poor representative ...’’
From Thatcher to Sir Elton John — a pilot’s life for him
MichaelCrymble is the owner of Mandeville Aerodrome in Southland, but before that he enjoyed a high-flying career as a pilot for VIPs that took him from Belfast to Gore via royals, prime ministers and pop stars.
This is his high-flying story.
‘‘Since I was knee-high to a grasshopper, I was always mad about airplanes,’’ Mr Crymble, 72, said while volunteering at Warbirds Over Wānaka.
‘‘I don’t know why, it was just in me.’’
Mr Crymble joined the Air Training Corps (equivalent to Air Cadets) as soon as he could, gaining his gliding licence at 14, before winning a flying scholarship with the Royal Air Force (RAF) at 16.
The scholarship is where Mr Crymble’s flight training began in earnest and he must have made quite an impression.
‘‘I was looking at maybe going on to university after school, but when I did the assessment for the flying scholarship the RAF recognised something in me and they said, ‘forget university young man, come in as a direct entry pilot.’’’
At 17, Mr Crymble joined the RAF, flying his first Hercules — a 70-tonne, four-engined troop transporter — before he was 19.
After three years as a co-pilot, at just 23, Mr Crymble became the RAF’s youngest captain to pilot a Hercules.
‘‘I was the youngest, lowest paid member of the crew and I was flying hairy 45-year-old sergeants around the world as the captain,’’ Mr Crymble said.
As a pilot flying the Hercules, Mr Crymble saw his fair share of action, taking part in the Falklands and Balkans wars, as well as playing a role in conflicts in Belize, Zimbabwe and Ethiopia.
Then, having spent 14 years flying in and out of war zones, Mr Crymble’s life took a significant turn when he was selected to join the ‘‘Queen’s Flight’’, the RAF squadron responsible for flying members of the Royal Family and British government.
Mr Crymble spent 14 years in the Queen’s Flight, flying all of the Royal Family and the British prime ministers of the day all over the world.
‘‘Margaret Thatcher was one of those prime ministers who commanded such presence that even if you didn’t know she was there, the hairs stood up on the back of your neck.
‘‘She was followed by the delightful ‘grey man’, John Major, and then Tony Blair.
‘‘Tony Blair came a cropper with me once when he took his entire family on holiday to Italy saying it was a government job, but he was actually visiting friends in Tuscany.
‘‘The press naturally got hold of it and the front of the newspapers was Blair and his family in front of the Royal jet and there I was in the cockpit.’’
In addition to flying royalty and world leaders, during the Gulf War in 1991, the Queen’s Flight was deployed to transport the coalition generals around the Middle East.
‘‘We were the first in and the last out,’’ Mr Crymble said.
‘‘Towards the end of the war, the generals came to me and briefed me that they wanted to land at Kuwait City as the Iraqis were being chased up the Basra Road.
‘‘I had lots of stuff on that airplane, but I didn’t have any weapons, so I said, ‘OK, as long as you know the risks.’’’
When Saddam Hussein set fire to the Kuwaiti oil fields and clouds of smoke prevented an appraisal of the damage via satellite, the generals asked Mr Crymble to fly low so they could survey the damage.
‘‘Our airplanes had been out there in the sand for years and made the windows in the cabin rather opaque, so they couldn’t get any clear photographs through them.
‘‘So, I’m in this tiny little cockpit and these generals were coming up pushing their cameras in front of me to take the all-important pictures.
‘‘I’m flying visually at 250 knots, 250 feet above these blazing infernos and they’re elbowing me in the face for the sake of a picture.’’
After three decades in the RAF, Mr Crymble decided it was time to leave and he was met by the warm embrace of private luxury aviation.
‘‘Because of my ... background in the Queen’s Flight, I had become a very marketable thing in the corporate aviation world.
‘‘I got picked up by an Egyptian who was a friend of [former Egyptian president] Hosni Mubarak and I flew him around for a couple of years, which got me into the private jet business.
‘‘Then a company in Switzerland heard about me and offered me the chance to fly Gulfstream jets, so for quite some time I was flying the rich and famous — film stars, pop stars, bankers, kings, wherever they needed to go.’’
After a while, Sir Elton John got in touch, he said.
‘‘He must have heard about me because he was friendly with Lady Diana and I was most fortunate to end up as his captain for a number of memorable years.
‘‘They were a great bunch of guys, and I had the pleasure of flying him to New Zealand several times to perform.’’
Eventually, Mr Crymble retired from the executive aviation game, aged-out by an industry looking for ‘‘the younger man that will last longer in the job’’, he said.
When this happened, his retirement plan, drawn up while flying gulfstream jets, was put into action.
‘‘I’d had an owner who wanted to come to New Zealand ...
I arrived here as a relatively old man ...
I said to myself right there and then, ‘I’m going to retire here’ and that’s exactly what I did.’’
Today, Mr Crymble split his time between his home north of Kaitaia and Southland, where he owns Mandeville Aerodrome, the oldest continuously operated airfield in New Zealand.
