Akureyri, Iceland
Day 18. 09/July/2014 Day score 7.
I left the tent and walked back to the airfield. I walked through the worlds most northern Botanical Gardens and down through the old town and streets. The high way to the airport and airport were on reclaimed ground out in the fjord.
Itzy seemed fine, sitting their grabbing the attention of any passer by. The reason for coming to Akureyri is the famous Flugsafn IslandsAviation Museum. It wasn’t open till 11, so I sat with a couple from the midlands, where I’m from, and chatted away about Iceland until it opened. They were quite independent travellers
‘per-se’, my favourite, and they had been here in the winter and knew they wanted to return to Iceland in the summer. The museum opened and we entered in.
Relatively petite, about the size of a sports hall, but very interesting and well laid out. Soon though I realised that this fantastic collection of Icelandic aircraft of note and the displays of the early history of aviation in Iceland all lead to one airline and one person. Atlantic Airways could be from anywhere, but indeed it was Icelandic and belonged to Arngrimur Johannsson, the gent who had driven to say hello to me last night.
Now there were of course the pioneers of Icelandic aviation, all displayed very well in a time board walk. One amazing story was, an American DC4 crashed on top of a glacier. No one was killed but the plane was written off. The Americans landed a new DC3 next to it on skies to remove any salvage. But they forgot to keep the DC3 moving occasionally and the skies froze to the ice. A storm blew up and the DC3 was buried. They tried but failed to dig it out next summer and in the end sold it cheap to the foundling Icelandic Airways. Two heroic Icelandic pilots went up and dug it out and dragged it off the glacier, got it going, flew it for a couple of years and when they sold it, the vast profit was used to start off and bolster their airline.
But Arngrimur had founded Icelandic’s Air Atlanta, and Atlantic Airways and it grew into a major global aviation player. When he stepped down he was rather rich and now does his utmost to support the museum and aviation in Iceland. And apparently he is a very nice bloke too. He borrowed one of his Boeing 747 and filled it full of around 400 of his friends and aviation fans from Iceland and flew them all to Oshkosh, where I’m heading. He goes every year some how and said he hoped to see me there last night… Basically half of the planes in the museum belonged to him.
I met the museum manager Gestur Jonasson and chatted about my Classic flight Museum connections at Coventry and how and what we operated. I had my laptop with me so fired up the photo albums.
A great time, brill people and I got a sticker too.
Back at Myflug, I went up the spiral stairs and met the pilots of the air ambulance’s in their briefing rooms and offices of the flying school. There was Christion Junior and Haukur, the pilots on duty. They had, well everyone had heard of my arrival issues at Egilsstadir. Haukur spoke very good English… He explained this was because he started his flying career training in Phoenix Arizona America for 4 or 5 years if I remember well, which of course I don’t. He invited me to stay in his and his college’s pilot’s home from home flat down town. I’m one for not putting anyone out, but this was never going to be a problem. They had to fly a patient to Reykjavik but I would do more planning and we would meet up later.
I didn’t get much done, talking to all the pilots and soon the hours past, the King Air returned and everyone agreed to meet later in town. Haukur drove me to pick up my tent in his POS (Pile of Shoot) car that he bombed round in while in Akureyri, his home and fiancé and 3 year old daughter living in Reykjavik. We arrived at the pilot’s flat, I put on my best clothes and we headed for town. We wound up in the noisy bar I walked past last night. They had cider, the first drink since I left home and good to. The others didn’t materialise, so after one drink we returned to the flat after a long day.
Thought for the Day: Museum was fun… Good people here as expected of Iceland.
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