Bird's eye view of Dubai of the 1980s shows city on cusp of transformation

A photograph shows Dubai's Sheikh Zayed Road, much quieter and smaller, stretching into the haze in the direction of Abu Dhabi.

The World Trade Centre apartments dominate the image, with tracts of desert surrounding it.

It dates back to the 1980s, capturing a city ready for the changes to come.

Along Sheikh Zayed Road are some new tower blocks, harbingers of the building boom that would sweep the old away.

The image was taken from a Cessna training plane piloted by Richard Parry.

Mr Parry, who is from Wales, came to the city to work on establishing Emirates and gave flying lessons in his spare time.

This allowed him to visually record the city and country from the skies.

"After taking off towards the sea, we'd make a left turn and fly over the ocean just offshore, parallel with the beach," Mr Parry told The National, about the vista from the cockpit at the time the photograph was taken.

"The low-rise villas of Jumeirah were on your right as you flew down Sheikh Zayed Road.

"And then on the left, once you got past the World Trade Centre, there were these big open areas that were just sand."

The long-demolished Metropolitan Hotel was a little bit farther down and what was Chicago Beach Hotel was visible on the right. Then it was down to Desert Springs, halfway between the Metropolitan and Jebel Ali.

"We had a block of airspace there … that we were allowed to manoeuvre around, with students learning to turn the airplane, climb the airplane, descend it and practise forced landings," he said.

"The biggest hazard was some radio masts and we also had to keep a good lookout for the Aerogulf helicopters that serviced the oil rigs and would head out and return to Dubai parallel to the coastline."

Mr Parry had visited Dubai several times before relocating here to the city where his family connections stretch back to the 1960s when his father often visited as a sea captain.

"My father used to joke – the best way to navigate towards Dubai was by using the World Trade Centre," he said with a chuckle. "That was the best navigation aid for Dubai ever built."

The city during this time was much smaller. Life revolved around the Creek.

Another aerial shot from Mr Parry's collection shows the mouth of Dubai Creek with the Hyatt Regency hotel standing in isolation on the Deira side. This photograph also shows the historic neighbourhood of Shindagha across the water.

Several vibrant images of Dubai Creek portray how central it was to life there, with dhows and abras fussing about the water. They show how Deira at this point was quite built up with hotels such as Sheraton Dubai Creek and the InterContinental (now Radisson Blu) in operation but the Bur Dubai side was much less developed.

Mr Parry recalls only Shindagha, Satwa and the Karama area being developed.

These training flights also took him round the country, north to Ras Al Khaimah and east across the mountains to Fujairah. “You turned right from Dubai and went in a straight line to Ras Al Khaimah, past the little fishing ports of Umm Al Quwain and Ajman," he recalled.

"It had a good long runway. You could actually fly circuits, land, go into the terminal and have a cup of coffee. Unbelievable now that the UAE airspace is so much busier."

There was one apocryphal story about one of the instructors who sent a student on a solo cross-country to Ras Al Khaimah, Mr Parry remembered. After some time, the student had not returned.

"The story went that he'd actually managed to fly over the mountains and with air-traffic control assistance landed at Fujairah.

"Reports said he got himself disorientated somehow but that story went down in annals of the flying club folklore. But it could have ended up badly."

But signs pointing to Dubai’s future were evident from the photos.

A new city would be built stretching down Sheikh Zayed Road. Even Mr Parry lived for a time in the Wafa Tower, also known as the Emirates Pink Tower, one of the new buildings that fronted Sheikh Zayed Road.

Today an aerial shot of Sheikh Zayed Road from the same vantage point looks very different.

The Trade Centre apartments are still there - with many older residents still referring to them as the Hilton apartments after the demolished hotel was once sat beside them - and the building in which Mr Parry lived. But new neighbourhoods, hotels and skyscrapers, including the world’s tallest, Burj Khalifa, tower over Sheikh Zayed Road.

Emirates has gone on to become one of the world’s best airlines and Dubai one of the busiest airports. A new world-class terminal has opened in Abu Dhabi and the region generally is enjoying a golden age for aviation.

Mr Parry went on to have a distinguished career in aviation, flying first for Gulf Air and then for Emirates from 1995 to when he retired in 2014. Now living in Malaysia, he looks back on those days fondly.

"There was still a little sense of pioneering, if you like,” he said, describing Dubai then as one of the world’s best-kept secrets.

"Although it was radically different from the way my father remembered it in the late 1960s, when they really were pioneering.

"It was a really, really nice place to live. We were very happy and thoroughly enjoyed our time there."