The Captain returned the embraces of teary-eyed flight attendants as fellow captains waited their turn to give him a farewell bear hug.
Among them was Captain Kori Robertson who had difficulty containing the emotion of having had the good fortune to have flown with “Captain Smooth” – his father, LIAT pilot Keith Robertson.
This was the scene playing out at Robertson’s final flight into the Grantley Adams International Airport on Friday. Whispers of “tremendous pilot”, “a real gentleman”, “a dapper fellow” could be heard being uttered by people who had interacted with the debonair aviator throughout his 40 years as a LIAT pilot.
The people who crowded the tarmac, held cameras trained on the skies in anticipation of the sight of LIAT Flight 371 coming in for a final trademark “grease landing” by a man who had almost lost his life in the quest to make aviation a career.
Robertson first worked in banking in his native St Vincent, but when friends formed a flying club there in 1971 and later acquired an aircraft he knew he was going to leave the figures for the skies.
It was while training on an aircraft that the flying club had purchased from a member of the Barbados Light Aeroplane Club that Robertson had the experience of his life.
On his second flight doing practice exercises between St Vincent and St Lucia with an experienced pilot from Barbados, the plane crashed.
“We did not make it back,” he said.
The pilot was killed and the young aspiring pilot sustained severe injuries that would keep him in hospital for a year and a half.
He had five broken ribs, collapsed lungs, sliced fingers and other injuries so horrific that when his father visited him in hospital he was moved to ask “son are you now satisfied that you have a relatively good profession with the bank and you could make banking a career?
You see you nearly lost your life?”
The elder Robertson could only walk away from his son’s bedside in disbelief after hearing Keith say “daddy, as soon as I get up from this bed, I am going back in that cockpit”.
Returned to bank
He wanted to prove a point and though he went back to the bank for a few months after recovery, in April 1971 he took off to Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach, Florida, at the time the only aeronautical university in the States, to begin two years of studies. In 1973 he joined Carib West Airways as an engineer, leaving after just a few months for LIAT.
He was the first Vincentian to join LIAT as a captain at a time when there were fewer than 50, with the largest percentage being English with others from Antigua, Trinidad and Barbados. At the time he flew the Hawker Siddeley 748 better known as the Avro 748, and said there were only two airports where LIAT planes could land after 7 p.m. – in Barbados and Trinidad.
It was “an exceptional time” for Keith when crews “had a blast” in a spirit of camaraderie as they overnighted in the various territories. He reflected on the challenges of landing the Avro in some of the region’s more difficult airports such as in Montserrat, Dominica and St Vincent, with short runways that tested the pilot’s dexterity.
“In Montserrat where the pilot’s final approach was 45 degrees to the eventual runway heading and at around 500 feet to touch down, that is when you start to do a slight bank to line up with the runway. Plus the runway was extremely short, needing a lot of dexterity to execute the landing.
“In Dominica you go over the coconut trees as a marker and fly down into the valley. If the wind is high you would be like a pendulum coming through that valley and the constant rain could create a problem.
“In St Vincent, if the wind is high, because you land going inland towards the mountain, you are committed at a certain point and you have to ensure once you go to that point, you are committed to land, so there is no turning back.”
He remained in aviation long enough to see those conditions change, with countries building longer runways and improving airport facilities, making it easier for pilots to navigate their way in and out, though Caribbean pilots had already devised their own methods of making approaches to and departures from the more complicated runways.
At a reception hosted at the GAIA after his arrival on Friday, amidst his usual jocund pronouncements, Keith digressed to prod fellow LIAT staff about passenger care.
Asked afterwards about the admonition he told the Sunday Sun: “I used to tell them treat my passengers like eggs and we will be great friends. Don’t shake them up.”
He went on: “Eighty per cent of the people that travel are scared of flying and if you are going to conduct a flight where you are going to take a path through every cloud at high speeds you are going to shake the hell out of people. They are already scared to get on board.”
While trying to maintain a distance from the regional airline’s woes, Keith did express some concern for the inconvenience the Caribbean traveller suffered whenever industrial action was taken.
“There must be room for negotiation,” he said.
While Keith piloted his last flight from St Lucia to Barbados, his son Kori sat in the jump seat – “an awesome” experience for Kori and a “tremendous feeling” for the father who confessed he really wanted his son to be a doctor.
But Kori said he was swayed by what he saw of a father committed to a job he loved and could not resist following him to the skies.
Family means everything to the gracefully greying Keith whose swagger still attracts a second glance. He and his wife Kay, the former flight attendant to whom he has been married for many years, have three sons.
Keith gives Kay a lot of the praise for her input. But he does not let you miss the fact that he too played his part with the waking up late at night to change, feed and pacify.
Keith has pulled up the throttle and tossed the “pilot’s hat” to his son Kori, though the buzz is that there is a lot of work in aviation and elsewhere awaiting the now retired pilot.