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Kuwait in the Fifties by Jamil Wafa (1955)

I feel, though I am not British,  the real name in those golden old days was BEST OF ALL CARRIERS.  BOAC was instrumental in helping to creating a number of carriers under the umbrella of BOAC Associated Companies, such as Arab Airways of Jordan, Gulf Aviation of Bahrain, Aden Airways of Aden, BWIA , SAA and many others.

Obviously those associated companies were created largely to benefit BOAC and Britain.  A similar situation is now developing whereby Emirates, Etihad and Qatar Airways of the Gulf Region are taking on major shares/equity in Alitalia, Air Berlin, Jet Airways and Virgin amongst other carriers.


In 1950 BOAC operated three weekly Argonaut flights between London/Rome/Beirut or Damascus/Kuwait and Bahrain.   The arrival in Kuwait was around 3.15 in the afternoon and as Kuwait was a very quiet city, people in town could hear the aircraft engines (Rolls Royce) roaring over the city and people would immediately say, here comes the BOAC aircraft. The four piston engined aircraft was built by Canadair and powered by 4 Rolls Royce engines.


We did the ship's papers of the aircraft from a tent as there were no office buildings at the airport. One day a big stormy wind blew away the tent and all the aircraft ship's papers were in tatters. Fortunately the aircraft was light and the captain took off without the trim sheet of the aircraft. 

Following that incident the Government decided to build a small terminal at the airport. During the construction we started to do the ships papers at the back end of the Argonaut aircraft where there used to be a small circular lounge with a round table. 


Airlines now proudly market their sleeperette seats!  When I handled those old type of piston engine aircraft they already had sleeperette seats, way back in the fifties, fitted on the Super Constellation (Connies) with fully stretched seats.

The BA Stratocrusiers (Stratos) that operated daily between London to New York known as the MONARCH service, even had a  limited number of bunk beds on upper floor of the aircraft. 

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