WHEN John Waiting discovered how difficult it was to fly from Teesside Airport to his holiday home in Menorca, he ended up chartering his own plane.

That was back in 1973 and, enterprising as he was, he had no inkling then of just how closely his own life would be linked with the airport.

Last week he retired as its business services manager after 18 years on the team. But it was as an entrepreneur that his first link was forged, to his and the airport's mutual benefit.

"We owned a property on the island of Menorca, but it was a beggar of a job trying to get from Teesside to Mahon, the capital," he recalled.

"So I formed a company with a couple of Darlington businessmen - lawyer Ken Hodgson and insurance broker, Brian Bailey.

"We decided we should become tour operators, so with no experience whatever, we chartered aircraft and booked accommodation on the island.

"It fell to me to charter the aircraft we needed from Aviaco, a Spanish airline which has been absorbed into Iberia, the national airline. We called the company Teemah, from the names of the two airports.

"There were only a handful of charter companies in those days and about half-a-dozen destinations.

"Because we owned property on Menorca, we got to know it like the back of our hands."

It was very successful and was run alongside other interests until 1981, when it was sold to the Newsfayre group, which made him general manager. It then branched out into tours to the Costa Del Sol but Mr Waiting left when the business was sold on to British American Tobacco.

It was then that he had a foray into broadcasting for six months to keep the wolf from the door. He worked with Ernie Brown from Radio Cleveland on a freelance basis.

"We did holiday programmes around the region as far afield as Carlisle, Newcastle and Humberside."

In 1985, he spotted the advertisement for a marketing information officer at what was then Tees-side Airport - and never looked back.

Mr Waiting was born in Durham City and raised in Newcastle until his father's job took him to Galashiels in the Scottish Borders. He moved back to take an HNC at Rutherford College, now Northumbria University, and worked as a research chemist in a laboratory.

"But it was too much like academia for me. It didn't suit my personality. I like meeting people," he said.

After a time, he joined an insurance company, working in Sheffield, Newcastle and London and eventually coming back up to Guisborough where he still lives with his wife, Dorothy. That was when they bought the property on Menorca which started this tale.

At the airport, he moved from his marketing role to customer services manager and finally business services manager.

"They have all involved external affairs and public relations with local business, industry and contacts with the media," he said.

Over the years he has done a fair bit of flying around the globe to conferences.

"Israel stands out," he said without hesitation. "It was a bit alarming in the Eighties. A couple of days before I went, buses were being blown up and all sorts of nasty events taking place.

"I walked right around the city walls of Jerusalem and went up the Mount of Olives and met some very interesting Israelis and Arab people.

"It is a very emotional environment - to see people who literally hate one another.

"The hotel I was staying in was only a short distance from the Knesset, the Israeli parliament. I was in the room next to a senior politician who had two armed guards outside his room all night. It is a country that certainly keeps you awake."

He has seen Teesside Airport grow from about 300,000 passengers a year to 750,000 and it is still on course to expand.

The years have had a lot of highlights.

"We chartered Concorde for the air show at the airport in 1986, which included a supersonic flight to the Arctic Circle. It cost about £35,000 to charter it."

The world's largest plane, a Russian Antonov, arrived in 1996, attracting throngs of plane-spotters.

Scores of personalities have passed through the arrivals lounge - the British and other royal families, European ministers, sports personalities and pop stars.

"Euro 96 had a lot of national teams flying in and the Bulgarians came in the president's aircraft. We have also had Robbie Williams, Oasis, Take That and Princess Diana.

"My favourite was Elle Macpherson. It was a big disappointment I wasn't allowed to take a photograph," he added with a smile.

But it was the more recent visit of President George W Bush which proved a real eye opener.

"There were scores of secret service agents, two Boeings, two personal helicopters, six military helicopters, 17 cargo aircraft with equipment including a bullet proof car. The American Press, about 110 of them, came in their own aircraft and there were over 100 White House aides.

"There was a lot of work for a fairly small organisation going on behind the scenes and everything else was going on normally as scheduled.

"The only constraint was that no aircraft were allowed to take off within ten minutes of the president."

Mr Waiting has worked with all the airport's managing directors except the first one, who was the station commandant involved in the handover of the former RAF Middleton St George airfield and its acres of land for the sum of £340,000.

After it opened in 1964, the local authorities who bought it ploughed £1.35m into building a passenger terminal, car parking and accommodation.

"I think it is important to give praise and credit to the councils who invested local taxpayers' money in the airport," he said. "If they hadn't done that, we wouldn't have the airport we have today. We take off our hats to them for their initiative."

The airport is now undergoing an overhaul with a multi-million pound investment from Peel Airports.

And another change is imminent when Teesside's name is altered to Durham-Tees Valley Airport.

"But that's not why I'm leaving," Mr Waiting laughed.