Andromeda Aviation

[Carde]

Thanks, glad you like it.

[Carde]

Guess who is back in town?

[chaitanya]

Guess who is back in town?

Jun'ko Zane?

[Carde]

Flying the classics part one

In a day of modern mostly self flying airliners with their massive efficient turbofan engines the Vickers VC10 is quite the opposite. A plane from the jet age she guzzles fuel like there is no such thing as oil prices, she requires 3 in the cockpit to keep an eye on it all and she uses 4 loud and proud turbo jet engines. The Andromeda Aviation fleet might be 50 years old and showing it in many ways, the one place they do not is inside. As far as the passengers are concerned they might be onboard one of Elon Musk SpaceX's spaceships. For the flying crew however things are still very much the same, but you would need to put a gun to their heads before they would consider switching out. With nearly all the Andromeda Aviation staff coming from military service there is a certain way of how they do things and how they talk. No doubt professional, but also a bit more to the point and likely as a result a lot more efficient.

I have had the pleasure to witness their operation for a few weeks and in this series I will be writing about that experience starting off at their HQ, a few floors rented out in one of the many high rise buildings. Walking in through the main doors you enter a small reception area with a couple of comfortable chairs and some one behind the desk. After sorting out your appointment you are asked to wait and shortly after one of the staff shows up to escort you onwards. What I noticed was that this was not one of the modern all glass or open floor plan office, instead it was a corridor flanked by doors with numbers on them and at times name plates with titles and most of the time a rank with a (ret.) behind it. Something told me this was not an office to just start roaming around in on your own and this was confirmed when we reached on of the doors which read: 'Major (ret.) Jun'ko Zane, CEO'. My escort who had been polite, but not very talkative gave a quick triple tap on the door and waited. Not much later a call was heard on the other end "Come in." and so he led me inside.

Standing behind my escort I got my first glimpse at Jun'ko Zane, she was not exactly tall, but radiated an authority that seemed to be without question. "Thank you Sergeant, you can go." she told me escort whom nodded once before turning on his heels leaving the office and closing the door silently. Leaving me alone in the room with Jun'ko Zane the CEO and former RCAF major and this was the first time I noticed just how nervous I felt. I had spend months trying to get this meeting and just everything around me and how things went just made it feel all a bit to strange. Now as a added bonus I was looking at a pair of green eyes which felt like they would read me like an open book. "So you are Dave Milton, final year of your journalism study and persistent nuisance which I must add I can respect. You clearly seem to know what you want, so sit down and tell me what that is."

No hello how are you, would you like to sit down, can we get anything for you. No it was sit down and speak up and I would lie if I said I did not seriously question my choices, but in the end I knew this company was far to interesting so I sat down and told her that I wanted to write about her business from all aspects, that I wanted to talk to her staff about anything and everything and above all that I wanted full access where possible. I am sure I stumbled over my words a few times, to be honest I am having a bit of a hard time recalling the meeting. What I do remember is being grilled with many questions before after an hour she finally seemed pleased. I was told that she would discus the matter with her command team and would get back to me before the end of the week. With that she summed my escort the sergeant again who once again politely, but silently brought me to the reception area and took his leave again. Leaving me a little confused, but also relieved to walk out of the office again and deciding the best thing to do was head to the top floor bar and get some food and a drink to collect myself again. One thing is sure it was bound to be an interesting story.


A few days later I got a email asking me for some paperwork which I send to them and the next day after I got a call to come back to their office to finalize matters. So I did however this meeting went a little different as instead of being escorted through the hallways I found myself waiting an other hour and a half being told she was held up. After that time frame it was herself walking into the reception area, "I do apologize governmental agencies can be an absolute pain to deal with at times. Would you object to taking some lunch with me and finalizing this deal after?". Knowing all to well it would be an excellent time to get some questions in to the one person that was likely going to be the hardest to interview I did not need a lot of time to answer that request.

Look towards part two for my first interview with major Jun'ko Zane.

-Dave Milton
A Journalism major in his final year who has decided that as a part of a deeper study he wanted to spend some weeks with Cananda's arguably strangest airline Andromeda Aviation. In this series of articles he will describe his experience, hold interviews and write in depth about the operations of Andromeda Aviation.