Men Who Killed Qantas - Matthew Benns [13]
McMaster was perturbed by the ‘street talk’ of Scott’s carousing that was known at the hotel, the club and the golf links, but despite their reservations, the board allowed Scott to keep flying with Qantas. However, the crash delayed the new Brisbane to Charleville route by six months. Qantas had moved its head office to the Queensland capital as it realised other airlines were competing for government subsidies to provide airmail services and were striving to take control of the market. Norman Brearley’s West Australian Airways in Western Australia, Jim Larkin’s company Lasco in Victoria and Qantas in Queensland all faced up to a new challenge in 1930 when two of the nation’s aviation pioneers, Charles Kingsford Smith and Charles Ulm, launched Australian National Airlines between Sydney and Brisbane and Sydney and Melbourne.
In 1931 the British Post Office announced two experimental trips for an airmail service between London and Sydney as an extension of Imperial Airways’ London to Delhi service. Qantas was to fly the mail from Darwin to Sydney. Unfortunately, the Imperial plane ran short of fuel and crashed in Timor. There were no injuries and the mail survived but now Qantas did not have a multi-engined plane to fly over water and collect the mail. Instead Kingsford Smith heroically came to the rescue in the famous Australian National Airways plane Southern Cross. Qantas was at risk of being forced off its route altogether.
With KLM also launching an experimental route into Melbourne via Batavia and the Australian government struggling to find funds, the Qantas board decided to establish formal links with Imperial Airways. They were helped by the highly publicised loss of an Australian National Airways plane, Southern Cloud, the wreckage of which was not found until 1958, despite a massive search.
In 1932 Fysh reached a ‘gentleman’s agreement’ with Sir Walter Nicholson, the government representative on the board of Imperial Airways. One of the key clauses said: ‘It is the intention of both parties that each shall have a “square deal”, in the sense that expression is understood by fair and reasonably minded men.’10 And with that, a link was forged between Australian and British airlines that would carry on for many decades.
The partners brought their combined muscle to bear in the middle of 1932, when Australia established a committee to decide on the best option for an airmail route to London. Imperial Airways and Qantas registered a company in Queensland under the name Qantas Empire Airways Ltd to tender for the Australia to Singapore airmail service. It was a highly public battle for the much-coveted role. The de Havilland Aircraft Company was accused of collusion by withholding its prices and details from at least one tenderer. When Qantas Empire Airways won the tender, Kingsford Smith told the Sydney Morning Herald: ‘Apparently my tender was not even considered.’11 He felt the pioneers of aviation in Australia had been ‘overlooked’. His airline was finished and he died the following year when his plane went missing on a flight from Kent to Australia.
Just as Qantas was on the verge of entering a new era of aviation, its old business of delivering mail in the bush brought a timely reminder that flying was a dangerous business. Seasoned pilot Norman Chapman, earmarked for a role on the new Singapore airmail service, took off from Longreach for Winton on the regular mail run. He had two passengers