90-year-old writes of career in the air

Many dream of flying an aeroplane and soaring above the clouds. For former crop-dressing pilot Bruce Aitken, spending hours in the air was just a regular day at work.

The 90-year-old’s memoir tells of how he survived in the face of big business, and how he survived eight near-fatal accidents.

The most dramatic crash happened 1967 when Aitken’s aircraft struck power lines strung across a wide gully.

Seconds after Bruce scrambled from the smashed cockpit, the whole aircraft was engulfed in flames. It was a charred, twisted skeleton in minutes.

Aitken dreamed of flying since he was a boy. He took his first flying job in 1953 with a company called Airlift.

After a year in the air, a group of local farmers put their faith in the young pilot in his mid-20s.

‘‘Four farmers said to me ‘Bruce, get your a’ into gear and I’ll put the money in’,’’ Aitken said.

The business soon got off the ground, with Aitken flying a Tiger Moth.

There was plenty of competition in the Taranaki region, though.

‘‘It was tough. We were competing with these big companies. But my personal relationships with farmers were good,’’ Aitken said.

A typical day of crop dressing started at 6am and involved 10 hours of flying above sheep and beef farm pastures, dropping fertiliser.

Planes would only spend three to four minutes in the air. Pilots would then land and spend 20 seconds reloading, before taking off again.

‘‘My plane would do 15 or 16 trips an hour,’’ Aitken said.

It was a dangerous business to be in, he said.

‘‘In the first 16 years from the time I started, 51 pilots were killed. Seven were killed in one year.

‘‘Probably one of the reasons for the large number was the payment system, which was by the tonnes [of fertiliser] you sewed. If you sowed X number of tonnes in a month, that was your bonus.’’

Aitken trained nine pilots over 33 years – none of whom lost their lives.

In 1985, fire destroyed Farmers Aviation Ltd aircraft hangar and five aircraft within it. Aitken moved to Taupo with his wife Janet and ran Fantasia Florists at Marama Arcade until they retired.

* Visit Fantasia Florists at Marama Arcade for Bruce Malcolm Aitken’s memoir, $40.

ROBERT STEVEN Former pilot Bruce Aitken (90) has published a book about his growing his crop-dressing business in the 1950s, 60s and 70s, and surviving eight near-fatal crashes.

Pictured in the 1980s, crop-dressing pilot Bruce Aitken used to make one hundred flights a day to fight for his business in the competitive market.