Athelstan Rendall

Athelstan Sigfrid Mellersh Rendall OBE (3 January 1914 – 18 July 2006), known to his friends as Flaps Rendall, was a British pilot.

After gaining his pilot's licence, Rendall served with Imperial Airways, the Government of colonial Nigeria, the British Overseas Airways Corporation, and British Airways, becoming commander of its Vickers VC10 fleet. For his services during the Second World War, Norway appointed him a Knight of the Order of Saint Olav. He ended his career as an advisor to Air Ceylon.

Early life Rendall was born at Chagford, Devon, on 3 January 1914. After leaving Gresham's School His first job was with the Herts and Essex Aero Club, where he stayed for two years, working as a ground engineer. While there, he gained a pilot's licence, and in 1936 successfully applied to Imperial Airways to join the company as a pilot officer.

Career

In 1936 Rendall's flying career began as a co-pilot in a biplane, the HP 42 Hannibal, flying between Croydon Airport, London, and Paris–Le Bourget. After that, he joined the new de Havilland Express route between Khartoum in the Sudan and air fields in West Africa. He was still a junior co-pilot, also serving as radio operator, steward, and engineer, and sometimes joked that his only actual flying activity was done by working the Express's wing flaps, which was how he came to be nicknamed "Flaps". During this phase of his career he also worked as a charter pilot for the government of the Colony and Protectorate of Nigeria.

In the first year of the Second World War, working out of Lagos, Nigeria, Rendall flew General Charles de Gaulle, as part of a campaign by the Allies to control the French African colonies. He was by now flying a Curtiss Commando for BOAC's worldwide service on flights to Gibraltar and Lisbon, and to the besieged Malta. The flights to Malta were at night, due to enemy action. After some eighteen months, he changed from flying the Commando to the Dakota. BOAC had stopped flying to Stockholm, due to the war, but in 1941 it re-established a service, and Rendall found himself flying Dakotas at night over Denmark to bring back vital industrial Swedish ball bearings from Stockholm to Great Britain. Denmark was occupied by German forces at the time, and the Dakotas he was flying were replaced by faster Mosquitos. BOAC next posted him to Sydney as flight captain of its fleet of Boeing 707s, and then in 1962 he was transferred to command the Corporation's new Vickers VC10 fleet. This was a new British airliner aiming to rival the American machines then dominating long-haul flights. In 1965, on behalf of BOAC, Rendall accepted the Cumberbatch Trophy for air safety, presented by Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, as Grand Master of the Guild of Air Pilots and Air Navigators. In 1966, he commented on some problems BOAC faced when introducing new aircraft, making the point that flight simulators were very valuable for early training, but when a new aircraft first went on sale they were rarely available.

When he retired from British Airways, as the company had become in 1974, Rendall's log book recorded 15,500 hours of flying in fourteen different aircraft types. He then worked for Air Ceylon for three years, as an advisor on its new Hawker Siddeley Trident airliners. His wife died in May 1990, and Rendall lived on for a further sixteen years. He died in July 2006 at the age of 92, survived by all of his children. 1955: Guild of Air Pilots and Navigators Master Pilot Certificate "for long service and high achievement"