Lockdown revisted

Image e s, Unsplash

One morning in late February 2001 I woke at 5.15 am to listen to the Shipping Forecast on Radio 4, just as I had done almost every day for years despite living as far from maritime areas as one could be in the UK. After the forecast, and as my home was surrounded by sheep and cattle, I would usually half listen to Farming Today while I waited for my eyes to open.

Normally the programme was full of chatter, soundbites from auctions and talk of politics and money. That morning it was silent apart from the sound of a man crying, broken occasionally by his voice talking about the need to dismiss staff, the loss of his investments, fears for the future, and above all, the welfare of his animals. It was the first outbreak of Foot and Mouth since 1967, and was an event that was as devasting to farmers, animals and businesses as COVID-19 is today*.

A quick glimpse at sources around the internet, including the Foot and Mouth 2001 Wikipedia page, reveals a startling insight to the similarities between then and now: the lessons from previous scenarios that were never acted upon, the conflicting views on the origins of the disease, timetables detailing the outbreak, and the cancellation of events – ironically the Cheltenham Festival was one of the first major fixtures to be halted – the isolation of livestock, and the ban on international transport. Even the Dominic Cummings of their day were alluded to with the use of the Wayback Machine to dig deeper into the retrospective editing of blogs and articles about government failings and ‘you read it here first’ type bulletins. And just as in 2020, the outbreak followed a period of catastrophic floods; the Autumn of 2000 was the wettest in the United Kingdom since records began in 1766. The Winter was not much better.

It was a horrifying and desperately sad situation; I had many friends who were farmers, and I had come to love the cattle and sheep who were amongst my closest neighbours. But it was Spring so myself and my partners focussed on getting ready for a busy period to recover from the impact of the extreme weather of the previous few months which had seriously affected our business. I was confident and excited for the future; I felt Foot and Mouth would scarcely affect me or my company. How wrong I was.

At that time my business supported the training and development of aspiring Commercial Helicopter Pilots and was reliant on their need to travel to private land and farms so they could maintain their flying programmes. We could understand flooding: we could see it, and we heard the stories from friends whose homes were under water and who were forced to live on upper floors, and even one who had to move her family into a caravan in her parents’ garden for weeks while her own home dried out.

But we could not see Foot and Mouth, not at first anyway; that soon changed when the news was full of images of smoking pyres and demonstrations, daily reports of numbers of dead, and heart breaking stories of families suffering and livelihoods destroyed.

Our student pilots were effectively grounded; they were unable to fly to fields, or farms, or even their own land. They could not take the helicopters from the airfields, and eventually neither they nor us were allowed to enter airfields for any reason. All flying was stopped.

Flying is an expensive activity and, irrespective of how much passion there is for aviation, it does not take much to find a reason to consider other priorities, always with the intention of picking it up again later when ‘things get better’. We therefore had to guard our business from this and the loss of income from reduced flying hours, and we had to find ways of encouraging new clients. We had managed this reasonably well during the bad weather by finding activities on airfields that were located in places not so affected by flooding, and arranged with flying instructors to develop exercises to not just help student pilots maintain currency but also to retain enough interest to keep them motivated, and to encourage new people in.

We did not have this option now. There were no airfields to fly to and all our usual ‘land away’ sources such as farms, estates, and country house hotels were closed to us. We sent a few of our pilots overseas, but only the small number who could afford the additional financial burden of fares, accommodation, and extra hours needed to meet the regulatory requirements and policies of the host school.

That February forced us to take a very long look at our business. We realised it was essential that we adapted quickly to meet the situation head on, so we did two things: 1) we took our focus off flying and concentrated on the future businesses that our clients would one day set up when they became charter and media pilots; and 2) we developed products to support the business strategies of the flying schools who trained them. In short, we pivoted our business.

We designed and delivered business continuity workshops, marketing weekends, networking events, safety talks with experts from the Civil Aviation Authority and Mountain Rescue services, we hosted classes and invited Customs & Excise officers, bank managers, and accountants to give one to one and group guidance, and we set up individual and group mentoring sessions that we filmed and critiqued.

They were very popular and a great success and they got us through 2001 until the Foot and Mouth restrictions ended in the late Summer. We were back in business. Flying was back on, the weather was great, and our clients and the flying schools loved us. Everyone wanted to be a pilot again and now there was a queue of new people who were excited to train towards the dream job of being airline pilot. Because at that time, one of the fastest (and most enjoyable) routes to starting a career in the airlines was by first becoming a commercial helicopter pilot – it was a simply a question of converting your licence. We were back on the road to success!

I never thought I would go through such a time again.

Footnote:

One month after the country started opening up again after the Foot and Mouth outbreak I was called out of my office to come and look at the television. It was 2 pm on Tuesday 11 September 2001; that day will live with many people for a long time. The atmosphere throughout the world was intense, just as it was at the start of the Coronavirus lockdown. And then, just as now, everyone was understandably scared on so many levels.

It felt that nobody wanted to fly after 9/11 particularly as a new pilot. As a business we continued on until 2003, but never really recovered. We had helped in part to forge the careers of some really great pilots, had made some amazing friends, and had learned so much. We had done it all through creativity, imagination and very hard work and we had accomplished what we wanted to. But we had also outgrown the business. Finally, two of our clients were flying a helicopter that had a mechanical failure 10 feet from the ground. Neither were physically hurt but it was frightening for everyone, and enough to make us move on. After 12 years it was finally time to call it a day.

* By the time that Foot and Mouth was stopped in October 2001 it was estimated to have cost the United Kingdom £8 billion. There were over 2000 farms affected around the UK. Over 6 million cattle and sheep were killed. Cumbria was the worst affected area of the country, and the outbreak devastated the tourist industry in the many parts of the UK, with the worst affected being the Lake District. That year’s General Election was delayed by a month.

Image (C) Gael Hillyard

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