Tell us about your impressive Speedbird Collection

I started collecting from a very young age. I was 6/ 7 when I decided to remove the entire contents of the seat pocket and meal tray off my flight as well as keeping hold of all the tickets and luggage tags. My parents indulged my passion for aviation with trips to Queen’s Building at Heathrow to watch the planes and always pilfering anything they could on their travels.

I started to get more serious with my collection in my teen years and start to appreciate the detail and reasoning behind branding and design etc. I was about 13 when this happened. I would buy items from eBay, much to my parents despair (with their card!) and would ask anyone I knew who was flying to pinch things for me!

Eventually I started to run out of space and so during the Pandemic I decided to start streamlining my collection to focus on my real passion, the history of British Airways, its predecessor’s and the airlines it has absorbed over the decades.

I always wanted to be cabin crew from a very young age and I started to fly for British Airways when I was 18 and the rest as they say, is history. I now fly for a Scandinavian carrier out of Heathrow but this does not detract from my passion for my previous employer. I adore this industry as it has so many like minded people with some of the best stories you will ever hear. I have looked after and worked with some amazing people from Royalty to first time parents.

I long for the good old days of proper inflight service and stylish uniforms. When time and detail was the order of the day, not capacity and cost savings. The collection is stored in a warehouse. It is hard to say how many items are in the collection.

A few numbers that help indicate the dedication and passion are as follows: Four seats of seats from 1960’s-1980’s from First Class British Airways to BOAC and British Caledonian Economy Class. Over 200 uniforms from BEA, BOAC, British Airways, British Caledonian, British Midland, Caledonian Airways and Dan Air. These range from cabin crew and pilot uniforms to ground staff uniforms.
One door from a Classic Boeing 747, over 600 menus, 250 safety cards, three inflight trolleys, 24 Royal Flight menus including some of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth’s personal menu’s (complete with flight manual which details all her requests, right down to inflight films to be viewed!), over 300 issues of the airline’s Highlife magazine.

400 luggage labels, over 100 SEP/ aircraft specific manuals, 103 name badges, 300 scale models and so much more! I am often asked what my favourite item is and it’s impossible to name just one. I think my 1965 BOAC Stewardess uniform certainly ranks highly as does a small pot of BEA Ice cream from the 1950’s and two complete economy class trays from BEA and BOAC.

I’m also rather proud of my four Concorde meal trays complete with all the crockery and glassware etc. I love these as they show attention to detail and thought. These days a full size economy tray with proper dishes is a novelty and practically non existent on short haul flights. And the Concorde trays are so beautifully presented, considering the average flight time was just over 3 hours it amazes me such lavish menus could be so effortlessly dispensed in the cabin by the superb cabin crew.

Have a look at Juke’s instagram www.instagram.com/thespeedbirdcollection/