Taking to the Skies

by Jim Eames

  Caught in a cyclone at Whim Creek he landed, tied down the aircraft and headed for the local pub, only to find the pub and its occupants had moved to a mine shaft where they were sheltering from 209-kilometre-an-hour winds for five days. When the cyclone’s fury finally passed and Collopy was able to come outside to see how the aircraft had fared there was no sign of it. Flying over the route later he would often see bits and pieces of it scattered across the countryside.

  After Western Australian Airways Collopy joined the Royal Aero Club of Western Australia as the chief flying instructor. By this time he had 2690 hours in his log book and still retained a yen for the unusual. When the Club’s annual ball came around he decided to mark the occasion by making a grand entrance. He confesses:

  I thought I’d arrive in a blaze of glory so I fixed a phosphorous flare to each wing of the club’s biplane and taxied down St George’s Terrace to Government House. Unfortunately, though, I forgot those flares needed cooling so by the time I got there both wings were alight. The police murdered me for that one.

  Back in the airline business in 1935, he spent two years flying eastern Australian routes with Holyman’s Air Services before a brief stint in Malaya flying between Kuala Lumpur, Penang, Kotabaru and British North Borneo, returning to Australia to fly again for Holyman’s. Joining the Department of Civil Aviation in 1940 he spent the early part of the war assisting in the airlift of civilians south from Papua New Guinea and later in Darwin.

  After the war he was part of a team of former aviators who helped create an Australian air-traffic-control system which would become a world leader in its field. By the later 1950s he was DCA’s regional director for South Australia and the Northern Territory, responsible for all aviation activities from Adelaide to Darwin.

  Reminiscing on his retirement in 1970, he would describe it as ‘one of the best jobs you could have in Australia’. As with his days in the Kimberley in the 1930s, he relished the vastness of the landscape and the characters he got to know along the way. Such was his knowledge and commitment that many in DCA’s head office in Melbourne simply referred to it as The Kingdom of Collopy.

  And along with the daily, mostly serious problems which came across his desk, he still managed to retain his sense of humour. When it came to dealing with Alice Springs’ resident eccentric, Olive Pink, he needed it. Even among the annals of outback Australia there must be few who matched Olive Pink. Variously described over the years as a troublemaker, a serial complainant and once even a ‘nasty old witch’, Olive Pink literally strode the streets of the Alice like few before or since. But for every derogatory epithet you could find an equally generous description of a dedicated anthropologist, a woman of substance and a lifelong campaigner for Aboriginal rights, the latter involving her working alone for long periods in some of the community’s most isolated outposts.

  There was no doubt, however, that Miss Pink, founder of Olive Pink Botanical Gardens of the Alice, was a thorn in the side of any authority—be they corporations, church missionaries or the bureaucracy—and capable of launching into the most acerbic diatribes, penned in sprawling, handwritten notes running into multiple pages. Her handwriting may have been hard to read, but there was no mistaking the message and it would be one such missive that would bring her and Francis William Collopy into conflict.

  The letter, from DCA’s acting director, C.C. ‘Stiffy’ Wiggins, arrived on Collopy’s desk late in July 1959. Wiggins, as it turned out, hadn’t quite got Olive’s gender right but there was no mistaking the seriousness of the complaint. Pilots taking off from Alice Springs airport were apparently turning sharply over her house and her native flora reserve and looking through her bathroom window. Tongue firmly in cheek, Wiggins castigated Collopy for not attending to ‘Mr’ Pink’s complaint earlier.

  Collopy, Wiggins ordered, must investigate and report back. Collopy was quickly on the case, but first needed to clear up the gender situation. Complainant Pink was a ‘Miss’ not a ‘Mr’ and a scourge to a wide range of bureaucracies—from federal and state government departments to the local fire brigade.

  Now that she had turned her attention to the aviation industry, Collopy assured Wiggins he would tackle the complaint but concluded his letter by giving Wiggins the benefit of his initial suggestions for fixing the problem.

  I list them in descending order of practicability.

  1. Shift Mt Gillen [a hill in proximity to the airport]

  2. Divert the Todd River

  3. De-licence Connellans and Ansett-ANA

  4. Shoot Olive

  5. Recruit Olive to the (DCA) Division of Air Safety Investigation.

  I favour No 4 although No 5 had merit.

  With that off his chest Collopy promised on his next visit to Alice Springs he would ‘endeavour to console and enlighten her’.

  The weeks passed until eventually another missive from Olive arrived on Wiggins’ Melbourne desk, but this time it was a ringing endorsement of the efforts of ‘that charming Mr Collopy’ who had achieved wonderful results in fixing her problem with those straying aircraft and peeking pilots. Miss Pink informed Wiggins she was so delighted that she had planted a tree on her reserve which hereafter would be known as ‘The Collopy Tree’. Wiggins, suitably impressed, wrote to thank her profusely.

  The months passed and all was quiet on the Alice Springs front. Then, out of the blue, another letter arrived from Olive Pink and she was not happy, as she described over four handwritten foolscap pages how Connellans’ pilots were once again up to their old tricks. She’d had enough, she said, and her annoyance was such that, along with writing this letter, she had taken another drastic decision: she was no longer watering The Collopy Tree!

  As for Frank Collopy, his reaction to the developments are not recorded but, like Olive, he himself would become something of a character in the outback tradition. Frank Collopy, 73, died in Adelaide in 1977. Jim Collopy, 77, died in Melbourne in 1979.

  6

  ‘How far ahead is he?’

  Those five words, cutting through the air waves as a Trans-Australia Airline Boeing 727 roared down Sydney airport’s main runway on the evening of Friday 29 January 1971, would become the intriguing centrepiece of one of the luckiest escapes Australian aviation would ever experience. Not only would they be uttered in the critical seconds it takes to create or avoid a disaster, but they would haunt several of those involved for the rest of their lives. Today, more than 40 years later, those words still literally hang in the air—unanswered.

  What was answered, however, was the narrow margin that existed between a safe take-off to Perth and two jet airliners filled with passengers ending in a ball of flame two-thirds of the way down Mascot’s runway. The 57-page report by the Australian Department of Civil Aviation’s Air Safety Investigation Branch seven months later was in character. Dry, official and unadorned with flowery language, it contained a typically forensic account of the events of that night, the factors leading to the accident, the accident itself and its aftermath.

  As with all such reports, the aim was two-fold. To determine the causes, allocate responsibilities and, one would hope, learn from the experience, the latter something the aviation industry prided itself in. And as is so often the case in such complex investigations, the answer would not lie in one particular cause, but a series of circumstances which would combine to bring disaster within several metres of 240 souls.

  The brief introduction to the report set the scene at Mascot not long after 9.30 p.m. on that Friday night, describing how the TAA Boeing 727 VH-TJA struck the tail of a Canadian Pacific Airlines DC8-63 aircraft, CF-CPQ, ‘. . . whilst the former was taking off on Runway 16 at Sydney (Kingsford Smith) Airport, New South Wales.’ The TAA aircraft had continued with its take-off but made an emergency landing after dumping fuel at Sydney some minutes later.

  At the time of the collision, the report said, the DC8-63 was on the ground, having just landed, and taxiing under its own power to the parking area.

&nbs
p; Both aircraft were substantially damaged in the collision but none of the 240 persons on board the two aircraft was injured.

  Beyond the report’s matter-of-fact paragraphs and black-and-white photographs lay an event which in the space of only a few seconds meant the difference between life and death.

  Light rain drifted through the Botany Bay area that night and although it was not raining at the time, Doug Spiers, first officer in the right-hand seat of the Perth-bound Boeing 727, could see the runway was still glistening wet from a most recent passing shower.

  Although visibility was good, roughly sixteen kilometres, like driving a car, rain and wet conditions always bring a little sharper alertness to aircrew. It’s not that there’s any great danger involved, it’s just that there’s not a pilot in the world who’d rather have a wet runway than a dry one. Take-offs and landings are when an aircraft is at its most vulnerable, as it steps from one environment to the next.

  Spiers and Captain Jim James knew each other well. Spiers had been rostered to fly with James for a month, but their partnership had been interrupted when James, a senior captain, had been required to train another pilot. The training commitment had been completed a day earlier than anticipated, otherwise they would not even have been together this night.

  The pair had completed their essential pre-take-off checks as they taxied the aircraft to a holding position just off the northern edge of Mascot’s main north–south runway. There they were told by air-traffic control to hold and await the arrival of a CP Air DC-8 approaching to land in front of them.

  The flight from Sydney to Perth they were about to undertake was Australia’s longest cross-country commercial service for the Boeing 727 tri-jet in the early seventies. James and Spiers were flying the first version of the jet to enter service, the 727-100 series, and while later versions would easily bridge the distance, the operation from Sydney to Perth in the 100 was marginal to say the least. In fact, beating against the strong winter westerlies generally called for a refuelling stop at Adelaide. On that night, however, with eight crew and 84 passengers on board, they expected it to be nonstop and to achieve it the aircraft was heavily loaded. As the maximum take-off weight of their Boeing was 72 574 kilograms of passengers, freight and fuel, VH-TJA had only 417 kilograms to spare.

  Listening while they waited with engines idling, Spiers could tell the airport was not particularly busy. He knew from his earphones that an East West Airlines Fokker Friendship had taxied up out of sight behind them and was waiting in line for take-off. He saw the large shape of the stretched DC-8 come across in front of him and land towards the south and heard the ATC tower tell a DC-9 jet, still some distance north of the airport, to continue its approach.

  So, when the tower cleared his 727 for an immediate takeoff, Spiers mentally calculated that, with four aircraft in play, the controller wanted to get the Fokker behind them away before the approaching DC-9 landed. To this day, Spiers believes the controller’s attention might naturally have been focused on the threshold, or northern end of the main runway, where the major activity was taking place—a 727 moving onto the runway for take-off with a Fokker close behind it, and a DC-9 approaching to land. Although adequate separations were probably in place, the northern end of Mascot was where the action was.

  But what was happening or, more to the point, not happening towards the other end of the runway, would have a massive bearing on what was to come. As the Canadian Pacific DC-8, with 128 passengers and crew aboard, neared the end of its landing run and rolled towards the southern end of the runway, the ATC ground controller instructed: ‘Take first taxiway right . . . call on 121.7,’ referring to the radio frequency which the CP air crew would now use while taxiing to the terminal. The crew of the Canadian aircraft, however, acknowledged the instruction but would insist what they had heard was: ‘. . . backtrack if you like—change to 121.7.’

  So, at the end of its landing roll the Canadian captain began a slow manoeuvre to turn the big jet around, a manoeuvre which would take longer than normal due to the extra care needed in the wet. And in what would be an unfortunate visual misconception, the ground controller, watching the turning aircraft from some distance away and, believing it had turned to enter the taxiway and was clear of the runway, cleared the TAA Boeing for take-off.

  Incredibly, in another of those accumulations of circumstances that are a feature of many air accidents, the take-off clearance for the Boeing could not be heard by the Canadian crew as they were now tuned to a different radio frequency. And not only were they still on the runway, but they had a fully loaded Boeing 727 coming straight at them.

  Doug Spiers is adamant today that they could not see the Canadian aircraft on the runway when they were cleared for take-off. Runways often have undulations across their length and the 3352-metre main north–south runway at Mascot is no exception: the runway actually rises to a high point at General Holmes Drive. It’s only a few feet, but the DC-8 was on the other side of that rise.

  Spiers says at no stage did he or Jim James see any strobe beacons flashing from the DC-8 and one could probably rightly assume they wouldn’t have started the take-off if they had. He does, however, still wonder whether the aircraft’s tail lights may have been there somewhere, but on a wet night they could easily have merged with the lights of the Kurnell refinery on the other side of Botany Bay.

  Now, its throttles fully open, the Boeing began to gather speed down the runway. With James flying the aircraft it was Spiers’ job to hold the throttles firmly forward and monitor the speed of the aircraft along the ground, ready to call ‘Rotate’ to his captain when they reached the optimum speed at which the aircraft is ready to start its rotation to lift off the runway and achieve a safe take-off speed. But at just about the time he was ready to call, Spiers became aware of landing lights in front of them.

  ‘At that stage all I could do was call: “Rotate”.’

  What the crew of the Canadian aircraft must have thought when they first saw the lights of the 727 racing towards them is not recorded, but the captain of the aircraft responded immediately and began to turn the big jet off onto an eastern taxiway. It was too late.

  As the Boeing clambered into the air Spiers saw the tail of the DC-8 flash below his right-side cockpit window, and there was a sharp lurch as he felt the aircraft momentarily slow but keep flying. Remarkably, the crew of the DC-8 had no idea that a chunk of their tail was missing and put the bump they felt down to their nose wheel running through a hole in the taxiway.

  In the minutes after the contact, while the crew of TJA began to make their own damage assessment, back on the ground, radio signals were being exchanged in an attempt to sort out what had happened. Air-traffic control first asked CP Air to confirm they were on the taxiway:

  ‘Negative, Sir, we’re on the runway. We were cleared to backtrack on the runway,’ was the response, which must have sent a shiver through those in the control tower. Remarkably, the crew of the DC-8 had no idea exactly what had happened. Meanwhile, the approaching DC-9 was immediately ordered to abort its landing and go around.

  As they turned left across Botany Bay the alarm systems in the cockpit were telling James and Spiers they had lost hydraulics, but they had no idea what additional damage might have been caused to the aircraft. There was little doubt, however, that if they needed to come back immediately they would require the maximum runway length of the main runway—or Runway 16—due to the weight of the fully loaded 727. Spiers told the tower they would plan to do a long circuit and come back and land on 16. They were told 16 was closed due to debris on the runway.

  Doug Spiers says this was met with a terse exchange from TJA’s captain, which was probably understandable from where Jim James was sitting. He’d like, he asked, to know just what the debris was because it was probably theirs and if they knew what it was they would have a better idea of their own damage. And he was coming in on Runway 16 anyway, so perhaps they had better clean it up!

  That was not the
only radio exchange which would cause Spiers to smile after the event. When he radioed the TAA operations controller that they would have to come back, the controller told Spiers not to worry as he had a spare 727 available so they could take that to Perth. Sitting in his Mascot office he was oblivious to the drama taking place outside.

  Things were now busy in VH-TJA as the crew began to assess the damage. First, they knew they had lost their A System hydraulics, which prevented the landing gear from being retracted. While they knew it might be possible to apply a little more hydraulic pressure to unlock it, James was not prepared to risk any further damage so they would leave the undercarriage down. As they prepared to dump fuel, Spiers told the passengers over the PA system that there had been an accident but everything was under control.

  ‘We had a first-class crew and there was really no panic among the passengers,’ Spiers recalls.

  In the meantime, Flight Engineer Jim Ryan was sent back into the aircraft to see whether it was possible to make a visual assessment of the damage to the underwing area by lifting up the carpet which covers several viewing holes towards the rear of the aircraft cabin. Through there it’s possible to see whether the locking pin in the landing gear is in place. Ryan confirmed the locks were in place but the light also showed that one set of landing gear doors was missing entirely.

  Added to that news was the fact that they were encountering problems dumping fuel. Normally dumping enough fuel to reduce the Boeing 727-100 to a safe landing weight would take only about five minutes, but they now found that the fuel-booster pumps on the right wing were obviously damaged. Thus the fuel was gushing from the left wing at a faster rate than the right causing the aircraft to lose its lateral balance, forcing the crew to periodically stop dumping from the left wing until the right could catch up. So five minutes for fuel dumping became 40 minutes, during which time James and Spiers tried to guess what else might be wrong.