Fly Into Danger (ITV 1972, Louis Cabot, Susan Holderness)

In seven part teen drama Fly Into Danger young Chris Lomax gets a job as a mechanic at Chilford Green Airfield, he is keen to learn to be a pilot but Chris very quickly learns that his new boss Ritchie and pilot Jeff Strong are up to something.

When Chris discovers a young Indian boy hiding out in the store room it leads him to uncover a people smuggling racket running out of the airfield and led by Ritchie and bad guy Moji Patel.

It’s a tense and exciting series that obviously makes much of the flying sequences, in fact so much so that there is no theme tune over either the opening credits or the end credits. Just engine noise and scenes of the planes in action. This was Louis Cabot’s only starring role and his career had petered out by the mid-seventies.

The three pilots used on the series were Barrie Shaw, Peter Smith and Ray McKenzie-Blyth. The real life airfield used was Halfpenny Green in Staffordshire.

It’s another of those series that have suffered somewhat  with only two episodes still existing in colour, the rest as black and white telerecordings but at least the whole series does still exist.

production details
UK / ITV – ATV / 7×25 minute episode / Broadcast 31 May – 12 July 1972 at 5.20pm

Writer: Roy Russell (except episode 5 written by David Stevens) / Production Design: Martin Davey / Producer: David Foster / Director: Jonathan Wright Miller

cast
Louis Cabot as Chris Lomax
Leigh Anthony as Lofty
Bernard Kay as Ritchie
Susan Holderness as Sarah
Edward Peel as Jeff Strong
Robert Keegan as Bill Hurst
Sam Dastor as Moji Patel

THE EPISODES
1. TAKE-OFF (31 May 72)
2. IN A SPIN (7 Jun 72)
3. GROUNDED (14 Jun 72)
4. MAYDAY MAYDAY (21 Jun 72)
5. TURBULENCE (28 Jun 72)
6. FORCED TAKE-OFF (5 Jul 72)
7. FINAL APPROACH (12 Jul 72)