Taking to the Skies

by Jim Eames

  Qantas’ philosophy in those days was to not buy a brand-new aeroplane but to wait for someone else to ‘run it in’, therefore opting to wait several years for the improved 200 series, a decision which would prove wise. In addition, the 200 series would have increased range and other refinements particularly suited to the airline’s long-haul operations and, as Walker admits:

  We were also able to see the bugs ironed out and Pan Am had their share of them, particularly with the engines, but there was no doubt we were looking at an exceptional aeroplane.

  Not all the action was taking place at Boeing’s purpose-built 9.3-hectare factory at Everett, north of Seattle. The ripple effect of an aircraft of this size was causing major airports around the world to agonise over the adjustments to their infrastructures necessary to handle the approaching giant.

  Runways and taxiways had to be widened to handle engines which otherwise would tear up their grassed verges, and the height of terminals needed to be increased to match the height necessary for loading and unloading passengers. And the airline itself had to make sure its own ground equipment could handle the larger catering galleys which would be required, an area where Qantas had taken advantage of the aircraft’s size to bring further benefit to its bottom line. They designed what was to become known as a ‘lower lobe galley’ situated in the hold below the airline’s passenger deck with a lift mechanism to carry food back and forth. Its removal from the main deck allowed an extra fifteen paying passenger seats to be added, an innovation quickly adopted by other airlines.

  Acquiring a tug with a drawbar strong enough to push 300 tonnes of aeroplane back and forth from the terminal for maintenance also called for some thinking outside the square. Engineering chief, Ron Yates, settled on designing a tractor similar to those used underground in the mining industry, modified to be low enough to drive under the nose of the aircraft.

  Not everything went according to plan, not least when it came to finding the money. With the cost of the first four aircraft—along with spares, hangars, ground support and training equipment—now reaching more than $160 million, government-owned Qantas was urgently awaiting an approval for their World Bank loan. With the deadline approaching, to the dismay of the company, the paperwork arrived back from the World Bank containing the words, ‘. . . we are not ready to finalise the finance.’

  Walker says when the airline’s chairman, Sir Roland Wilson, a former Treasury head and a stickler for process, instead of picking up the phone and calling the bank direct, elected to repeat the onerous application procedures through the tedious departmental channels, mild panic ensued. Thus the days dragged on as the deadline approached. According to Walker, some weeks later Wilson was meeting with one of the bankers, who asked why Qantas wasn’t taking up the loan. When Wilson explained the bank had rejected it they checked the paperwork. The ‘not’ in the sentence should have read ‘now’.

  As the aeroplanes took shape at Everett, Qantas would appoint its own team at Boeing to run alongside the aeroplanes as they were being built, a monitoring-and-oversight system which would remain in place for decades to come.

  The establishment of such a system wasn’t new. In fact, it had been employed with earlier Qantas aircraft like the Lockheed Constellation and the Boeing 707. But while the 707 had been a leap into the speed of the jet age, when airlines like Qantas ordered the Boeing 747 they were actually ordering a ‘paper aeroplane’ as there wasn’t even a prototype in existence at the time.

  Such a first of this type also required a contingent of engineering representatives from the airline, not only for power plants and airframe, but interior specifications for seating, galleys and other features, who would not only oversee their individual areas of responsibility but would undertake training for the licences they would subsequently need to handle the aeroplane once in service.

  Gradually, as the aeroplane developed, these would be reduced mainly to engineering and electronics specialists. Mick Ryan, who would become Qantas’ director of engineering, was one of those who lived with the project in Seattle from the conception of the 747 through to the delivery of the first four aeroplanes. Along with the normal day-to-day liaison between Qantas Sydney and Boeing on the aircraft’s progress, Ryan and the technical representatives handled numerous modifications to the aeroplane which weren’t included in the base price. Ryan says Qantas always aimed to put in place all the modifications at the early stage to minimise changes which would be more costly later while the aircraft was earning money in service. It was also a function of geography. In contrast to airlines like Pan American, who would always be within hours of the Boeing factory, Qantas was on the other side of the globe, too far away and too costly to fly an aeroplane back for anything beyond a most major modification.

  Also involved from the earliest stages, although not permanently based in Seattle, was a technical-development group comprised of pilots whose task would be to watch the development of everything on the flight deck, the layout of the flight deck itself and even where the taxi lights were positioned on the nose wheel. Finally, when the finished aircraft was rolled out of the factory and onto the flight line, their role would increase markedly.

  First Boeing’s own production test pilots would undertake ground checks and take the aircraft into the air for the first time, otherwise known as the ‘B1 flight’. There might then follow several days of ground running of engines and other tests before perhaps deciding to take it into the air a second time, for what would be known as the ‘B2 flight’. Then, at last, it would be Qantas’ turn, and although the 747 at this stage was still owned by Boeing, the customer would get their first chance to play with it.

  The Qantas development-group pilots and flight engineers, with all the other company representatives aboard, would initially carry out a series of checks on the ground to see if the aircraft was as the company ordered, a process which might take several days. Once these were completed the first customer flight would take place, with a Qantas and a Boeing pilot at the controls. This could be of more than two hours’ duration against a pre-determined flight-test routine, starting with checking that all the instrumentation was working perfectly on climb-out to an altitude of around 30 000 feet where the aircraft would be de-pressurised, allowing the Qantas team on board to check that all the oxygen masks dropped on cue and there were no problems with other passenger equipment.

  One of the team’s more bizarre tasks was to walk around the cabin with pins in their hands inspecting the vinyl covering on the aircraft’s walls to check for air bubbles created when the glue underneath reacted to pressurisation. Any air bubbles which had appeared would be fixed by inserting the pin to allow the air to escape from behind the vinyl. The holes remain permanently.

  Then, from a flying viewpoint, the really interesting part got under way, with the aircraft first taken up to maximum speed, then slowed down to the point where it was ready to stall, all designed to ensure that the various speed and stall warnings acted on cue.

  While the pilots might be familiar with the process, as their control columns began to shudder to warn that a stall was imminent, it could be a somewhat disconcerting experience for anyone down the back as Mick Ryan, who occasionally went on these production flights, can attest: ‘You could see the whole aeroplane shake, rattle and roll. Thank God it all held together but I must admit I still enjoyed it to a degree!’

  Ryan says Boeing usually took a fairly dim view of these excursions into the more extreme flying characteristics of the aeroplane, which they would have carried out already on Boeing’s own original flight-test aeroplanes, but were still insisted upon before the aircraft could be accepted as airworthy by Australia’s Department of Civil Aviation.

  Qantas Captain Alan Bones, who flew as part of the development group, describes how engines were also shut down one at a time and then re-lit, a situation which involved throttling back on that particular engine to allow it to cool before shutting it down to avoid it suffering what is known as a ‘th
ermal shock’, a condition which could cause serious damage if an engine operating at high temperatures is suddenly shut down in an environment where the ambient temperature could be as low as 50°C.

  ‘You managed the system by having one engine cooling, one engine at idle and the other two holding you up,’ explains Bones.

  After a ‘touch-and-go’ at an airfield that Boeing used at nearby Moses Lake, it would have been back to land at Everett to carry out the final item on the agenda—a rejected takeoff. With the 747s take-off system in the ‘rejected take-off’ mode, normally part of the pre-take-off procedure, they would roll down the runway until approaching take-off speed then pull back on the thrust levers. That would trigger the aircraft’s braking systems into coming on to maximum effect, doubtless also testing the seat belts those in the back were wearing. Back at the ramp discussions between Boeing and the Qantas people would analyse what might need to be attended to and decisions would be made on any further flights, although Bones says a second flight would only take place if absolutely necessary as it was a costly process. As some of the Boeing contracts people used to point out with a knowing smile: ‘It’s all going onto the cost of the aeroplane.’

  Gradually, over the years, as the aircraft gained service experience and systems improved, much of the flying procedure was reduced. Boeing welcomed this development, even offering the airline $20 000 in fuel to adopt reduced procedures. Neither the manufacturer nor their Australian customer wanted their product to be unnecessarily stressed.

  Bones says the move from analogue to the more efficient digital systems in the later 747 variants made much of the earlier testing unnecessary anyway. As soon as any supplementary operational or engineering anomalies were attended to, one last, quaintly bizarre flight remained to be undertaken before the aircraft could head for its new home.

  In the early years of Qantas buying its fleet of Boeing 707s, the Australian government would borrow the necessary money, mostly in US dollars, in overseas markets and on-lend the funds to Qantas under separate loan agreements. The payments to Boeing would come from Qantas’ own bank accounts and be reimbursed on or after aircraft delivery by Australian government loan funds.

  All that changed as the era of the Boeing 747s hit its stride in the 1980s when it became financially more prudent to lease an aircraft rather than buy it outright. Thus the future ownership of the aircraft would be passed to other parties who could better utilise taxation depreciation deductions against their own taxable income.

  The arrangement often involved a number of organisations joining together as equity participants, borrowing the bulk of the loan funds and then charging the costs of these arrangements back to Qantas in the form of lease charges. It was a ‘win win’ for Qantas as it could also allow the airline to meet the lease costs in the foreign currencies used, thereby providing natural currency hedging.

  But such involvements by multiple parties needed to get around any taxation complications they might mean for the Boeing company under US taxation provisions. Thus the aircraft would be signed over from Boeing to Qantas and one last special flight would take place carrying representatives from Boeing, Qantas and the lease parties into international airspace 321 kilometres off the coast west of Seattle. There, with the crew confirming latitude and longitude readings, all the formalities would be completed for the aircraft’s sale and lease back to Qantas.

  A slightly different procedure was adopted, however, when US banks became parties to the lease arrangements, albeit with another taxation twist. On these occasions the aircraft would be flown to Las Vegas, Nevada, where no taxes are imposed beyond those on gambling, and the necessary documentation completed.

  The sight of a huge Qantas 747 at Las Vegas airport always ensured significant local interest. Once such special flights were completed the newly minted Boeing 747 set off on a long career flying thousands of passengers on Qantas routes. And, by the way, if you happen to be one of those passengers, don’t bother to look for the pinpricks in the vinyl. They’re too minute too detect.

  15

  Embarrassing moments

  It’s something of a cliché that flying is inherently dangerous and, as it’s not humankind’s natural element, should therefore be left to the birds. The fact is, it doesn’t take much to turn a quite normal aviation situation into a serious accident or merely, if you’re lucky, what’s classified in the aviation lexicon as ‘an incident’.

  While often such situations can be the result of just bad luck or a slight error of judgement, they can cover a range of territory. To civil aviation authorities tasked with investigating them, however, they are clearly defined, often merely a nose wheel dropped into an unseen hole on the airfield while taxiing or perhaps clipping another aircraft’s wings while parking, although sometimes categorising them as an incident or the more serious ‘accident’ might depend on who’s trying to explain them to whom.

  When Qantas’ flagship Boeing 747 service, QF1 from Sydney to London, overshot the runway at Bangkok’s Don Muang airport in September 1999, the airline’s then chief executive, James Strong, saw fit to describe it to the media as an ‘incident’. One could understand his desire to play down the matter, given the airline’s renowned safety record, but the pictures then being flashed around the world of the Boeing, its undercarriage buried up to the axles in a golf course at the end of the runway, somehow made it hard to accept Strong’s somewhat conservative description.

  Reports later indicated that, in the many months before the aircraft returned to service, the cost to repair the damage ran into millions, leading some commentators to suggest that the easier course would have been to write off the aircraft. That, however, would have meant moving it into a category which is referred to in the industry as a ‘hull loss’, something Qantas certainly wouldn’t have wanted on its safety record.

  Such embarrassing accidents or incidents, given the nature of the genre, go back a long way in aviation. Along with taxiing into potholes, aeroplanes have hit kangaroos and emus and other animal intruders onto airports. As hard as it may be to believe these days, one even hit a train. It happened at Sydney airport on a night of poor visibility in June 1950 on a runway which was intersected at one end by the Sydney-to-Botany railway line used by coal trains to and from Bunnerong Power Station.

  Mascot in the 1950s was a far cry from the Sydney Kingsford Smith airport of today, now among the busiest in the world. Its three runways were much shorter and far less substantial than the current three and the ‘level crossing’ at the end of one of the runways presented few problems in handling two totally different transport modes via coordination between the airport’s control tower and the Mascot rail goods yard.

  The railway signalman would seek permission for a train to cross the runway and, providing all was clear, a set of warning signals would be operated from the control tower, but when there was confusion over which runway was to be used by an Ansett DC-3 en route to Coffs Harbour, an inevitable chain of events was set in motion.

  It all began when the DC-3 taxied to the end of the runway its captain believed he had been directed to, only to find the runway lights were not on. After pointing this out to air-traffic control it became evident the DC-3 now needed to use another runway for take-off so the captain received the go-ahead to taxi towards his new take-off position.

  In the meantime a coal train from Bunnerong was on its way, cleared to cross the runway the DC-3 was now taxiing on. The DC-3 had gone only part of the way when the copilot saw a dark shape appear out of the overcast. He shouted, ‘Hold it,’ but it was too late and the aircraft crashed into the side of the train with a force strong enough to derail several of the coal train’s freight wagons.

  Fire broke out in both of the aircraft’s engines, but they were quickly snuffed out by the aircraft’s fire extinguishers. Beyond the DC-3’s extensive damage, all fifteen passengers and three crew escaped serious injury, although having to note ‘collision with a train’ in a pilot’s log book would cert
ainly have launched an interesting dinner party conversation in subsequent years. Former Ansett employee and historian, Fred Niven, records wags in the airline subsequently coming up with the saying: ‘Don’t miss your train connection. Fly Ansett.’

  Mascot wasn’t the only Australian airport which also catered for train traffic. Wynyard in Tasmania featured a rail line across its runway with all rail and aircraft movements displayed on a console in the airport’s flight-services room and the trains and aircraft controlled by green and red lights. The system operated until as recently as 2005 when decreasing rail traffic no longer warranted it.

  Embarrassment, of course, can be measured in degrees, and in aviation terms at least, one of the most embarrassing moments would befall the people who carried the major responsibility for ensuring Australia’s airways were among the safest in the world.

  There’s no question that 24 January 1967 was one of the blackest days in the annals of Australia’s highly respected Department of Civil Aviation (DCA). On that afternoon two of DCA’s most experienced examiners of airmen—pilots responsible for checking the proficiency of Australia’s airline pilots—failed to lower the wheels while doing training at Victoria’s Avalon airport, west of Melbourne, almost destroying DCA’s Hawker Siddeley HS-125 executive jet in the process.

  The HS-125 was the pride of DCA’s Essendon-based Flying Unit, a fleet of aircraft which ranged from small single- and twin-engine aircraft used by DCA regional officers throughout Australia to larger types in a variety of roles. While the smaller aircraft were basically for such chores as checking airport and ground facilities, or carrying out safety checks on local operating companies, several larger Fokker Friendship aircraft, fitted with sophisticated electronic equipment, were a frequent sight at the nation’s major airports as they calibrated the accuracy of the navigation aids and landing systems used by the airlines.