Ndola C.A.A.

Two Of Our Viscount Fleet on Ndola Airport Apron.

For nearly 10 years, the C.A.A. office was situated in very small premises in St. Patrick's Road. In later years, it was affectionately (?) called the 'Black Hole of Ndola'.

Ndola had been somewhat a Cinderella and it was with a sigh of relief that we took possession of the new Terminal in Broadway during May 1958.

The Ground Floor Passenger Booking Office is pleasantly decorated in pastel colours with modern, light wood chairs, tables and counter. A writing desk and private telephone for passengers' use are added features. Behind the counter the Cashier has a glass screened office. Stairs lead to the Space Control unit on the first floor. This consists of a large room for control board, enquiries desk, central revolving table for correspondence, charts and files, and typist (with Phillips type P.A.B.X. telephone system controlled from s desk). A separate telex room and additional office for Reservations Superintendent and Area Sales Representative complete the 1st floor set-up.

Present staff consist of following - (Reservations)
Mr. J.K. Bone - Area Sales Rep. N.R
Mr. S.E. Hall - Reservations Superintendent
Mr. H. Hanson - Deputy Reservations Superintendent.
Mr. R. Frank - Senior Clerk (Counter)
Mr. W. Dean - Regional/Domestic Control and Correspondence.
Mrs. T. Simmons - Regional/Domestic Control and Correspondence
Mrs. D. Valentine - Regional/Domestic Control Correspondence.
Mrs. D. Andrade - Regional/Domestic Control Correspondence.
Mrs. V. Haslehurst - New Bookings and Pre-flight
Miss C. Kinsley - New Bookings and Pre-flight
Mrs.M. Browne - Typist/Telephone
Mrs. W. Scheepers - Cashier

Mr. Hanson ('Horace') has served since Imperial Airways days in Airlines with B.O.A.C., WAAC, and C.A.A. for a total of 20 years. Syd Hall is next in service with 7½ years in BOAC in Operations (ground radio), Traffic and Sales Divisions. He has been with C.A.A. since May 1951, making a total of 15 years in airlines.

The Ndola reservations unit covers the entire Copperbelt and therefore caters for Ndola, Kitwe, Luanshya, Mufulira, Chingola and Bancroft. A number of bookings are also effected for Broken Hill as well as out lying districts in the Northern Province. Expansion in air travel has been tremendous the past years and there are now 15 travel agents in the area covering all IATA carriers.

At the Airport, where a large variety of freight is handled including, we learnt recently, lottery tickets!, Station Supt. Mike Eksteen and his staff have not been so fortunate in obtaining new working premises, nevertheless they manage to keep what they have in reasonably spick and span condition.

The staff at the Airport consists of the following: -

Mr. M.C.C. Eksteen
Mr. C. Lillycrop
Mr. H.L. Armstrong
Mr. P. Tidman
Mr. Hill
Miss Watson
Miss Jones
Miss Van Dyk
Miss Kokkin

while the Freight Office in town is manned by:
Mr. D. Coleman
Mr. Cowley
Mrs. Le Versha.

The Engineers are:-
Mr. A.N. Wawn
Mr. W.J. Rheeder.

The Senior Station Engineer, Mr. Wawn, has been with us since September, 1946.


Behind the scenes at C.A.A.'s Ndola Sales Office

End
Extracted and recompiled by Eddy Norris from the Scaaner publication of April 1959 which was made available to ORAFs by Dave Vermaak. Thank you Dave.
Comments are always welcome, please mail them to Eddy Norris at orafs11@gmail.com and they will be loaded to this article.

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