Men Who Killed Qantas - Matthew Benns [37]
The first Boeing 707-138, named City of Canberra, arrived in Sydney from the Boeing factory in Seattle on 2 July 1959. Its flight time was a record 16 hours and 10 minutes, beating the previous record set by a DC7 by 11 hours and 20 minutes. Crowds flocked to see it, but residents near the airport were appalled at the thick black smoke trails left by the jet engines. Bean counters in Qantas head office were more concerned about the high fuel consumption. The engineers at the rapidly expanding Qantas Jet Base at Mascot quickly retrofitted new fan bypass engines to the Qantas jets, which ducted air around the body of the engine, increasing thrust and swallowing noise from the jet powerplant to make it quieter and more powerful. The increased performance meant there was no need to have water injections on short runways and ended the unpopular sight of greasy black smoke trails following Qantas jets into the sky.
Of course not everything with the 707s went according to plan. Two days before the Christmas of 1964 Qantas Captain R. C. Houghton was bringing his Boeing 707-138 jet in to land at Singapore when things went badly pear-shaped. An error of judgement by both pilots caused the plane to bounce. Incorrect technique in attempting to re-land the plane on the runway put it in such a severe nose-down attitude that the nose wheel touched the runway before the main wheels. No one was injured but the nose landing gear suffered extensive structural damage. However, incidents such as this were rare.
The arrival of the jets also marked a bigger change within Qantas. The pioneers were retiring and younger pilots, managers and technical experts were taking up the reins. These were the years when Qantas built up its enviable reputation for safety. Incidents on Qantas planes were virtually unheard of. The airline itself would traverse some rocky economic times over the next few decades under the stewardship of some remarkable men. Sir Cedric Turner, who was responsible for the dramatic postwar expansion and the arrival of the jet age, retired from Qantas in June 1967 and was replaced as chief executive by Captain Bert Ritchie, who guided the airline into the world of mass-market travel. Qantas even went into the hotel business, opening the luxury 450-room Wentworth Hotel next to the company’s headquarters in the heart of Sydney’s central business district.
Ritchie saw Qantas through the change of three governments and applied his common-sense approach to show that the supersonic Concorde would not be economically viable flying from Europe to Australia. He was at the helm for the oil crisis of the early 1970s and to report a $6 million loss in 1971–72, partly brought about by passengers flying to Singapore and then taking cheaper charter flights to Europe. He introduced new low fares on the new Boeing 747 jumbo jets to stop the rot. In fact, he showed nerve, not taking the first 747 series of jets but holding out for the 747 B series, which was better suited to Qantas’s unique long-haul conditions. It meant other airlines had a two-year lead on Qantas in operating the new wide-bodied jets. But once the jumbos were introduced, with lower charter-style fares, the gap was quickly made up and Qantas leaped ahead.
Ritchie was also in charge when Cyclone Tracy swept through Darwin in 1974. The airline evacuated 5,000 people in six days, setting records for a single 747 jet, which carried 673 people and a 707, which carried 327. However, the boom in low fares presented Ritchie’s successor, Keith Hamilton, with problems – the