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Aerospace to go after the component manufacturers instead. Labor Senator Kerry O’Brien said: ‘There is no doubt there has been a cover-up. Australians now need to be reassured these sort of contamination issues are not currently endangering crew and passengers.’13 When that evidence was sent to the House of Lords in Great Britain, Lord Tyler told the House: ‘Pilots, cabin crew and passengers have been denied information. It seems that BAe were more concerned about the leak of this document than the leak of toxic fumes into aircraft, with a potentially devastating result.’14 The British government, in an echo of the tone of aviation industry officials in Australia, said that only one in 2,000 flights were affected by fumes. Lord Tyler replied: ‘The Committee on Toxicology has refused to take evidence from the group representing pilots who are affected. In any event, one in 2,000 is hardly a drop in the ocean when there are some 2.5 million flights taking off across the world every month. Just one fatal incident would be one too many.’15

Susan Michaelis was a BAe 146 pilot flying QantasLink passengers up and down the east coast of Australia for National Jet Systems. An experienced pilot, the day she stepped into the cockpit of a BAe 146, she questioned the smell of ‘old socks and vomit’. After a while her voice became husky and then she started to suffer nausea, headaches, dizziness, tiredness and had trouble concentrating. At 35 years old and at the height of her flying career, she went home one night and collapsed. She was suffering from what would become known as aerotoxic syndrome. ‘The extent of the injury is shattering. I can never fly again. After years of visiting specialists I now know that the damage is irreversible. I have lung function and neurological abnormalities, permanent head pressure, I have difficulty concentrating, suffer chronic fatigue and chemical sensitivity, scans have shown brain damage and I have beryllium – the metal in BAe 146 engine bearings – attached to my DNA,’ she said.16 Michaelis has gone on to become a campaigner to highlight the dangers of toxic air in modern jets. ‘This is the asbestos of the skies. My determination to be a pilot has been replaced by a determination to bring about a change in an industry and stop others suffering what I have to live with for the rest of my life.’17

The first step in that fight would be for airlines such as Qantas to be honest about toxic fumes incidents that occur on its aircraft.

IN JULY 2004 passengers on Jetstar flight 711 to Sydney had just taken off from Hamilton Island in Queensland’s Whitsundays when they were thrown sharply to the left. ‘I felt my stomach go down, and the people said to me, “Oh, did you see that?” and I said, “No”, and they said, “Oh, it was a Qantas plane really close,”’ said New Zealand tourist Wendy Stevens.1 Fellow passenger Alan Bowler, travelling with his wife and children, was sitting on the other side of the Jetstar Boeing 717 and was also suddenly jerked to the left. The horizon disappeared. ‘All we could see was the water shimmering, and we were getting closer to it,’ he said.2 The larger Boeing 737 of Qantas flight QF1174 from Brisbane was coming in to land at exactly the same time as the Jetstar flight was taking off. Both planes were under the control of the Hamilton Island tower as the drama unfolded. ‘The Qantas flight crew could see the Jetstar aircraft at all times,’ Qantas reassured the travelling public in a statement. Many experts had predicted low-cost start-up airline Jetstar would collide with its rich parent Qantas when it was launched in 2004, but no one expected anything quite that dramatic.

Jetstar was born out of Qantas’s need to maintain a foothold in the ferociously competitive budget airfare market. At the start of the millennium Qantas was looking for ways to hold market share against Richard Branson’s budget airline Virgin Blue. The dogfight was a battle for more passengers on lower fares, with $1 one-way trips grabbing front-page headlines. And it did not take long to get dirty. Virgin