D

A

C

C

A



K

A

R

A

C

H

I

Bangladesh February 1974

I flew the second half of the Repatriation 
Flights ONA flew for the United Nations High 
Commissioner, flying refugees out of Dacca, 
Bangladesh back to Karachi, Pakistan and other 
refugees back the other way. 

Our crews were based out of Karachi, staying 
in the Intercontinental Hotel there. 
(Now Pearl Continental Hotel)

My times for the UN flights started with 
deadheading from JFK to Frankfurt, then deadhead 
on a different flight to Karachi, Pakistan on 
Feb.24, 1974. 

We flew our first flight on the 26th and my 
crew was Captain H. Andrechyn and Co-Pilot 
Fred Joseph, using A/C N864F. On March 1, my 
crew was Captain Press Cooper and Co-Pilot 
Tom Murphy same aircraft and we flew from 
Karachi to Dacca. As I started to do my 
cockpit preflight check for our return trip 
back, when I found the aircraft electrical 
system all screwed up and giving me wrong 
indications. 

The only thing maintenance could figure out 
was somebody must have connected 230 volts 
ground power instead of 115 volts, while 
I was outside doing my walk around preflight 
and burned out some relays in the system. 

Our return trip was cancelled and ONA had to 
send some new parts from JFK and mechanics 
from Frankfurt to fix it, which took three 
days. There was a couple of Soviet Turbo-prop 
(Ilyushin-8) passenger aircraft doing the same 
flights as us and our rep. ask them if they 
had room to give our whole crew a ride back 
to Karachi. They did and we all got to ride 
on a Soviet aircraft. 

The Soviet Captain wanted to see our aircraft 
inside the cockpit, so we gave him a look 
see and then we said we would like to see 
inside their cockpit and he showed us onboard. 

That aircraft was built like a sea going ship, 
everything looked big, heavy and rugged. On that 
particular plane they had a separate compartment 
in the rear section of the cabin separated by 
a curtain that had enough seats to accommodate 
our whole crew. They gave us all a shot of 
Russian Vodka during the flight and I asked if 
I could keep the Aero Flot shot glass as a 
souvenir. The flight attendant indicated he 
wanted something in return, so I gave him my 
ONA key ring and he was happy with that. 

When our plane was fixed, we got a ride back 
on the same Soviet aircraft to Bangladesh on 
the 4th. They replaced all 4 Gen. Control 
boxes (only 1 was bad,) #2 BTR, #1 EPR, & Bus 
Protection panel. 

For our flights 6th thru 13th of March my 
Capt. was Keith Lathan and Co-Pilot Tom Murphy. 
While on layover in Decca the UN Rep. ask one 
day if any ONA crewmembers would like to go on 
a site seeing ride in his Jeep around town. 
A few us did and it was very interesting and 
during one of our stops a small group of local 
children ran over to see us foreigners and I 
took their picture. 

On the 14th we all operated (Cooper, Latham, 
Joseph, Murphy, Mion & me) a ferry flight back 
to JFK, NY, with a fuel stop in England arriving 
JFK on the 15th of March.