The Veterans' Stories

Lam Kwok Choi
The Packaging Department was another important unit of the maintenance factory. You could actually earn your daily bread with skilful packaging…
The role of the Packaging Department
I was transferred from the “customer store” to the Packaging Department, serving our customers’ C-47 in particular. Our customers, you see, sent representatives to us to conduct daily inspection during the maintenance. Before the maintenance finished, these foreigners went shopping in Hong Kong, and our job was to package their stuffs, which would be leaving town with them. We had carpenters that make wooden boxes for packaging; sometimes we also used cardboard boxes. At first we made wrappers with a paper shredder, but later there were the bubble wrap and corrugated fiberboard, and much later we used chemical foam for packaging. If the stuff was too large to be packed we had to use wooden box. The most common one was the meter, and we wrapped it nicely with bubble papers before putting it in the box. You had to package them carefully so they wouldn’t fall apart during the delivery. We had no packaging lesson at all. We did it just by experience.
The “store” (Parts Department) in the 50s stockpiled all types of aircraft component parts. In the photo is the exclusive store of Hong Kong Airways, a customer of HAECO. This “customer store” kept in reserve all the parts of Hong Kong Airways.
Storeroom.