He had guided the flight. Both men knew they had made the flight as a team.

VOA: special.2009.03.18

Alan Shepard made only a fifteen-minute flight in the little one-man Mercury spacecraft.

VOA: special.2009.07.08

He also had made a Gemini flight.

VOA: special.2009.07.15

Despite later cancelling its flights, the Irish carrier Ryanair claimed it had made a test flight through ash over Scotland and challenged a ruling some flights should be grounded.

BBC: NI flights cancelled as ash cloud approaches

American astronaut Alan Shepard made a suborbital flight later that year, and John Glenn became the first American to orbit Earth in 1962.

CNN: Reports: Monkey soars from Iran into space -- and back

Luckily, the far-sighted BBC South Africa Bureau Chief had already made reservations on a flight to Johannesburg first thing the next morning.

BBC: How I left Zimbabwe