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From Doug Davidson - Hi Terry and gang: Many years ago, I was flying from Prestwick to Winnipeg. I always made a point of having a chat with Roddy McPhee, our station manager there. He often had a question about revenue accounting and I could investigate and report back. My family and I were waiting for a 'Stretched 8' that flew London - Prestwick - Winnipeg (oh my, those were the days!). On this day, two burly policemen appeared and Roddy said "This is going to be interesting!" The DC-8 came to a stop, the steps were wheeled into place, the cops boarded first and hauled off two passengers. There was one old boy who did not speak English and had no idea what was going on and one young fellow who was the crook. We had a particularly smart agent in Heathrow who had reviewed all the flight coupons after departure. They all looked good but then he or she also reviewed the back of the coupons. On the back of the coupons was red carbon so if you inspected that, it should show a mirror image of the data on the front carved into the carbon. They found two coupons that had obviously been written on twice with different data. The crook had gone into our London office and bought two tickets on the cheapest route we had which was Vancouver - Victoria. He had then fraudulently altered the coupons to read London to Winnipeg. Crooks got to be very good at that and at first glance the coupons looked OK on the front but they could not do anything about the carbon on the back. They got caught this time and didn't fly. Worse than that, they were now stranded in Prestwick, of all places. Best regards, Doug Davidson P.S. Entirely up to you if you ever print this. It's a true story! |
