Men Who Killed Qantas - Matthew Benns [79]
Public sentiment following this was best summed up in an email reprinted in David Penberthy’s column in the Daily Telegraph three days after the event: ‘When I’m at the departure area of Qantas domestic tomorrow taking off my belt, removing my shoes, assuring 22 people at the X-ray and metal-detecting machines that I have indeed nothing left in my pockets and that, no, I do not have a laptop in my backpack and that, yes, I am well aware my nail scissors pose a real danger to world peace, should I bother them with the news that 15 hoodlums are bashing someone to death 20 m to my left? Yours, perplexed, Sydney.’23
These are just a few of the scandals that have beset Qantas in more recent times. As with all good companies, of course, the best scandals are the ones that the lawyers say cannot be written about.
TARA KYNNERSLEY HAD the world at her feet the day she flew home to Melbourne on QF30 from London via Hong Kong to celebrate her 31st birthday with family and friends. It was July 2008 and she had big news for them, following her four-week European vacation with her boyfriend, Brent. He had proposed to her on the clifftops at Positano overlooking the Mediterranean on Italy’s romantic Amalfi Coast. Now, 55 minutes into the flight from Hong Kong and with the plane comfortably cruising at 29,000 feet, she was dreamily leafing through a bridal magazine as the crew began the cabin service. Brent was returning home on a different flight.
Maths researcher Jason Jeffers was on his way home to Melbourne after collecting his PhD from Cambridge University. He was sitting in a window seat and had just been served breakfast. ‘There was a “bang”, but not an explosion bang – more like something falling over or a thud. And suddenly, after the bang, you could see the curtains swirling away and there was a sudden rush of wind and a loss of pressure in the cabin. And then the masks fell down from the ceiling,’ he said.1
Eighteen-year-old Rachael Angley was sitting in seat 48C next to her 15-year-old brother, Ben Wallace, en route from their home in England to visit family and friends in Adelaide. She had been catching up on missed episodes of The Chaser and was just drifting off to sleep. She also heard the bang. ‘Instantly a cold gust of wind whistled in. I panicked as the plane dipped to one side and wind gushed around the cabin. I knew this shouldn’t be happening mid flight. As the plane shook with the change in air pressure I thought I was a goner. Air masks immediately sprung down in front of all of us. I looked around and I see … my fellow passengers frantically fitting the masks. Three young children were sitting around me. Their mums and dads held the masks forcefully against the struggling and crying toddlers,’ she said.2
Newly engaged Tara Kynnersley said: ‘It was a sudden plunge, then the plane plateaued. I didn’t hear the noise … but I thought that was it. We watch a lot of air-crash investigation shows. There was a bit of a panic because of the oxygen masks not working … I spoke to a woman whose kids’ masks were not working and the hosties were sitting with them, patting her on the back.’3 Suddenly, on the brink of a new life, Tara thought she was going to die. Somehow she found the inner strength to accept it. ‘I just thought, “I’m really happy with life. I have a beautiful fiancé, family, friends – I have a wonderful life”. And I thought, “I’m on a plane, there’s nothing I can really do about it”.’4
As papers and detritus howled through the depressurised cabin, a rumour quickly passed among the passengers that perhaps a door had popped out. Rachael Angley said: ‘I thought there