skyguy

I remember those 2 1/2 months, His family went through hell not knowing exactly what was going on. Bill had just remarried before going to TA and his wife was, understandably, a mess through this whole ordeal. There were all kind of rumors about what had happened to the crew, not knowing exactly, until finally, the remainder of the crew had walked out to civilization. There's also an article about this whole ordeal in "Air Line Pilot" Sept 1985 issue by C.V. Glines. Cheers, Garrett M.

That sounds like Fred. If you are in contact with him, tell him "Gary," his ATP instructor from Sierra Academy sends his regards. Fred was some what of an inspiration to me. We were talking about flying large aircraft, I having not flown anything larger than a Cessna 310, was wondering how difficult it would be to make that transition. Fred said "sh*t, nothing to it, an airspeed indicator and an altimeter are the same as in a cessna 150, just fly the gauges!" BTW Don, do you recall the Transamerica Cafunfo tragedy? I'm sure you do. The F.O. that was a casualty, was a friend of mine- Bill Reid. I had been Chief Pilot at West Air Airlines in the early 80's, flying Cessna 402s up and down the CA coast and had hired Bill as a Captain. He had just been R.I.F.ed out of the A.F., and had gone through a divorce when I hired him. He flew at West Air and eventually got hired at Pacific Express, which was a part of West Air holding, which was also the parent company of West Air Airlines (later to become a UAL regional). Bill had tried desperately to get on with P.E., which was flying BAC-111s. They then leased a B-737 and put it into passenger operations. Bill was so determined to work for P.E. that he bought a B-737 type rating, after which he was hired by P.E. He was on his first I.O.E. trip on the 737 when they closed their doors! Talk about a string of bad luck: RIFed, divorce, lost job at P.E., reminds me of the character in L'il Abner with the constant dark cloud over his head. Anyway, shortly after that, I ran into him and told him that the gal that had been in personnel at P.E. (cannot recall her name) was now in personnel at T.A., and that he should contact her. He did and was hired. Some time later, I ran into Bill and he was telling me about how great it was to fly the Herk in Africa. That was just before the ill fated trip to the Diamond mine, and I guess you know the rest. Garrett

Hi all, First time on this forum. I found it while browsing through the FAA Airman Data Base looking up former students and work colleagues; in particular Fred "non-sched Fred" Kreppein. I did a Google search and came up with this site. Fred certainly was a legend in his own time. I first met Fred when I was flight instructing at Sierra Academy in OAK back in the late 70's. Fred was an ATP student of mine and had just recently gone to work for TransAmerica. Of all of the many students that I had, Fred was probably the most memorable, a great, funny guy and also a "good stick." I really looked forward to our training sessions as there was sure to be some type of interesting "war story" to be told. Later, when I became a "Freight Dog" myself, flying for Emery, Purolator and UPS, I ran into many people who also knew of "non-sked Fred", all having an interesting tale about him; I especially remember someone telling of having run into Fred at CDG. he was carrying a Silver saddle that belonged to Gaddafi. He was flying his Herk. I recall when he was my student, he had mentioned something about maybe flying Herks SINGLE PILOT in Lybia! Garrett M.