There are numerous items in the museum gift shop such as embroidered cloth patches – new releases and re-issue of past patches from many years ago, metal pins, coffee mugs, books, DVDs of South African Airways aircraft and recent air shows at AFB Swartkop, AFB Waterkloof, and Rand Airport, plastic snap-fit and die-cast aircraft models, SAA Museum Society caps and SAA Museum Society embroidered patches.

There is also a series of SAA Museum Aircraft posters (450x310mm) with history and technical specifications produced by The Aviation Shop www.aviationshop.co.za with original artwork by Pierre Lowe Victor.

By the Seat of my Pants: Memoir of a Pilot by Chris John Rosslee is a deeply personal memoir of courageous determination.

One man’s life of flying adventures; occasionally perilous, at times hilarious.

An intrepid but humble man refuses to allow his background of dyslexia and poverty to decide his future.

Captain Rosslee’s career tracks aviation history as he captains twenty-seven types of aircraft over thirty years, from Tiger Moths to Boeings.

During WW2, as an SAAF Junker Ju 86s bomber pilot with the Allied forces, he contends with makeshift maps, primitive instrumentation and limited fuel over the inhospitable East African bush.

He endures three WW2 forced-landings.

As a senior pilot for SAA, he lands the first passenger-carrying aircraft at the opening of the new Heathrow Airport, and then is invited to meet Queen Elizabeth at Heathrow’s 50^th Anniversary.

Trained to fly the 1953 Comet, doomed to disintegrate mid-air, pure chance keeps him alive.

Crossing the vast Indian Ocean, two dead engines, the third about to die, where is the closest land?

And how does he handle belly-landing a Boeing with a defective undercarriage, no more fuel, lousy weather and relying only on primitive instrumentation?

South African Airways Boeing 747 Fleet History in Picture by Arnold C. Rhoda.