Staff of an airline that once operated major routes out of Liverpool returned for a reunion event at the place from where they once flew regularly. More than 140 former employees of Cambrian Airways attended the event in the former Liverpool Airport terminal, now a Marriott hotel. The former staff attending included four former hostesses who had flown from overseas to attend the party. Edwina James (formerly Robinson) who worked for Cambrian from 1970 to 73 travelled from Shanghai where she now lives and said: "I just wanted to see everybody again. It was a great time in my life. We had a lot of fun and met a lot of interesting people.’’ The event was held 30 years to the day that the airline finished operations and was absorbed into British Airways. Based in Cardiff, it had been the Welsh national carrier and used the Welsh dragon as its emblem. | "This was an event we just couldn’t miss." | | Jenny Laycock (Keight). |
Its services from Speke included London, the Isle of Man and Belfast, Jersey and Cork using Viscount and BAC 1-11 aircraft. Organiser of the event, Dave Sharratt, who now lives in the East Midlands, worked as a traffic clerk for the airline at Liverpool. He said the idea of the reunion came to him when he travelled to Merseyside for the Hoylake Life Boat Day and called into the old airport terminal to see the changes. "I was very impressed with what they had done to it and thought: This is the ideal place for a reunion. I thought it might just be a handful of people but with the power of the internet it just snowballed.’’ Two other former hostesses flew from their homes in Vancouver for the event. Jan Sullivan (formerly Tamblin) now works for Air Canada and her friend, Jenny Laycock (Keight) has just retired from the same company. "We are still great friends and in fact there is another former Cambrian hostess over there as well,’’ said Jenny. "This was an event we just couldn’t miss.’’ Irene Aaby (Burns) flew in from Norway for the reunion and recalled that flying into Belfast during 'the troubles' could be "a little scary.’’ "We used to carry a lot of British servicemen to and from Northern Ireland and there was always a big security presence around the airport,’’ she said. "On one occasion shots were actually fired at the plane. After we landed the pilot took us to see the holes in the fuselage.’’ | 
