Nazareth World Music Festival Aircraft Tour – 1979

Lightening, Smoke, and the Border Crossings
– Nazareth’s Roadies –

After popping through the other side of a severe squall line of thunderstorms, heading the opposite direction of our route just west of Chicago, the Boeing 727 United Airlines captain came on the horn and asked, “What kind of aircraft are you?” I responded as the co-pilot in the right seat of our ship, “We’re a Vickers Viscount.” With a slight chuckle in his deep voice the United captain responded, “If I were you I’d turn around right now and find a suitable airport to wait this weather system out.”

Damn, not what we wanted to hear!

Next thing we were flying toward a Squall-line (a massive line of thunderstorms that doesn’t allow for passage in any aircraft that can’t get above 28K feet!) just past Chicago… our intended boarder crossing entry point was Des Moines, IA. – Shit, scratch that… time to turn around and head for Midway, Chicago. Problem was… we alerted the gov border folks of such change in plans and they weren’t all to happy about it.

Anyway…
Upon landing @ Midway (back when there was only one terminal open for the occasional airline flight in 1979) we were greeted with a couple of, not so friendly airport gov’t entities…

A lot more to come about my venture with Nazareth’s roadies in my book about flying rock ‘n roll in private aircraft…

‘Flying Rocks!’

Stories from the Air, Flying Some of the Biggest Rock N’ Roll Stars of the World…