Interview – Bill Pike

Bill Pike is so much of a rebel that he has made good a marketing effort that many have previously failed at while at the same time fulfilling a lifelong ambition to own and operate a DC-3 aircraft. Rebel Air is well-known in Sydney for its immaculate DC-3 and its owner’s constant fight with the Department of Transport for a fair deal.

Rebel Air commenced operations in December 1979 and has progressed rapidly into an efficiently organised and productive charter airline under the guiding hand of Bill and partner, Richard Frith backed up by a small band of loyal supporters.

Q: Is this a business proposition, or is it basically an enthusiast’s toy?

A: It is a business proposition. That is a complicated question and you almost need to give a lecture in economics to answer it.

The DC-3 costs more to run per seat mile than something more modern like a Fokker Friendship but it is not as expensive to buy. To buy a good Fokker you are probably talking like $1-$2 million. To buy a good DC-3 your are talking about $100,000 with almost brand-new engines and everything restored. You probably could not pay more than $100,000 for a top-line DC-3. The interest bill on $100,000 over a week is a relatively small amount of money – $200-$300.

On a million dollars your interest bill is $2000 a week or more. While the DC-3 is being used in its present role, which is a low-utilisation charter role, this is realistic. It takes groups away for a day or for a weekend, it does not go bash, bash, bash all day and get up 10 hours a day. 11 might get up one and a half or two hours a day.

Q: That is averaging out over seven days?

A: No. Not at all.

Q: That is just on the days it is flying?

A: This is right. the sort of group you get is a group that wants to go to Wagga and play football for a day. We fly them down at a time convenient to them, wait for the game, and bring them back after the festivities that night – perhaps an hour later or an hour earlier than they thought. That sort of flexibility you do not get from an airline.

The fact that it is full should mean we can offer fares at about 50 per cent of airline fares, but I cannot because the aeroplane is not working very hard that day.

All in, I can still do it for about 70 per cent of the airline fare, at a time and place convenient to them. The fact that it costs a bit more per seat mile to run is balanced by the fact that it is full and because there is not a lot of money invested I can afford low utilisation.

The weekends are filling up reasonably well. We need one day per week for the aeroplane to go somewhere to be viable, to pay wages.

We have a full-time first officer and the chief pilot, Captain Ross Home, is a partner in the business and therefore I do not have full-time wages for him.

But the absolute biggest killer is air navigation charges. It is going to be $1000 a month for us this year, even though the Department of Transport has granted us a 50 per cent remission. That remission is a fictitious thing. The full air nav charges on a DC-3 carrying 32 passengers are $24,000 per year.

Q: Whether you fly it or not?

A: Yes. The full air nav charges on something like a Bandeirante carrying 18 passengers a modern aeroplane which lends itself to high utilisation-are something like $7000 per year.

We are over the magic 5700 kilos figure where the Government really gets in. This has never really come to light before.

Q: What is significant about 5700 kilos?

A: What is significant? It is an arbitrary figure, above which aircraft are certified to higher standards. And it is an arbitrary figure above which the Government has decided to tax very heavily.

The Government talks about how the airlines pay 150 per cent of fees and general aviation pays 12 per cent, or something. These figures are grossly distorted because General Aviation wants 5000 ft of grass and the airlines want 15,000 ft of concrete eight feet thick, Because the General Aviation aircraft lands on this runway they want to charge him a proportion of the cost of the runway, which is a gross distortion.

All general aviation wants at Sydney Airport is a parallel runway 5000 feet long easily placed, not causing anybody any trouble and their own little bit of grass. They can stick all the rest of the stuff they have generated for the airlines.

The air is not crowded. Around Sydney Airport we have- I am digressing a little -maybe two airports. In California, around San Francisco, they have more airports in a 15-mile radius than we have in New South Wales or more aero-planes anyway.

All general aviation needs is a little parallel strip, a little area of their own, and all these other cranks can go and get lost. They can get their $75,000 a year fire tenders, and all that sort of stuff. General aviation does not want it, they do not want to pay for it. They do not want anything to do with it. They just want a little bit of grass and a place to park. Sydney Airport’s general aviation area is about as big as a football field and it handles more aeroplanes per year than Essendon Airport in Melbourne. Flight Facilities has one taxiway in and one taxiway out.

Sydney Airport has become an absolute football. No one wants to talk about facts or logic. The Randwick Council is against a parallel runway which would divert traffic from overhead Randwick. How stupid can you get? They do not want to talk about logic. They are not interested in fact. They have found it politically opportune to be against it. They do not know what they are against or why they are against it. They do not know what they are talking about.

If you write them a letter saying. “Dear Sir, why are you against an expansion of the airport which would divert traffic from overhead Randwick, they say “Uh – would it?”

Getting back to the three. We have been granted a remission against the $24,000 a year. It is in the ANOs that a Minister may do that if the usage of the aeroplane shows that blablahblah.

Nevertheless, we are still paying three times the rate that an airline aircraft would pay if it was flying the same number of hours. We are a low utilisation operator. If we were paying the air route fees the airlines pay – as the aeroplane flys it pays – I could afford to go and buy a second aeroplane. Then, as the utilisation increased, I would pay more air nav on it. Right now, for me to provide the sort of reliability I would like to provide, I need a second aeroplane. But it would cost me $1000 a month to sit on the ground while I developed work for it. I cannot afford that.

Q: So charter operators pay a fixed fee while airlines pay as they fly?

A: Yes. If I was flying 3000 hours a year, I would possibly be better off.

Q: What is your utilisation at the moment?

A: It varies but around 300-400hours per year. At that rate, we are paying at least three times what an airline would pay.

We carry 32 passengers into Sydney Airport. We are operationally restricted on our use of Bankstown Airport and yet we have to hold while commuter aircraft with eight people on board get priority in front of us. Why? Because they are commuters. Apparently, people who are travelling on a commuter aircraft are some sort of superior beings and must get priority over someone on a charter aircraft. Our aircraft is full. When we burn fuel we are burning it for 32 people. Some of these aircraft probably carry four and five people. Our people. are on an itinerary. They have just as much need to be there at a specific time as anybody else.

But the policy was to drive aircraft to Bankstown. We cannot go to Bankstown because of traffic.

You get that clown who wrote an article on Sydney Airport saying if 30 per cent of the traffic of Sydney Airport was put to Bankstown, it would only increase Bankstown’s movements by four per cent.

If that does not indicate to anybody that Bankstown is already bursting at the seams . . . how stupid can you be?

He does not know anything about aeroplanes. The reason they do not go to Bankstown is that Bankstown’s safety standards are abysmally low. You have mid-air collisions over Bankstown and for every one you have, there are 10 you almost have.

Q: You have a big mixture of different performance aircraft there.

A: That is right if you start putting Fokker Friendships in amongst them you would have a disaster. This idiot suggested that.

However, we do not use Sydney Airport much. We are talking about three movements a week maybe. But when we have to have 20 or 30 minutes holding on a flight from the Hunter Valley into Sydney it is ruinous for us.

All the Minister says is that on the priorities for Sydney Airport, they think that our present priority is the one most suitable.

At other capital city airports, the priorities are, RPT, charter, private aircraft that cannot use the secondary airport, then private aircraft.

We maintain that the priorities should be at least RPT, (regular public transport) charter aircraft that cannot use the second airport, then charter aircraft. I think that makes sense.

Q: Does charter include commuters?

A: No. They are RPT. They set priority above us. I personally believe that since I am an aircraft carrying 32 people and must use Sydney Airport, I should have exactly the same priority as an eight-seater Queen Air coming up from Moruya. I see no point in making us hold when there is nowhere else we can go. I will settle for an improvement. The bureaucracy cannot handle the problem at Sydney Airport. They do not know what to do and nobody will let them do anything. Nobody is going to make a decision. Hayden says he would build an airport somewhere else but does not know where. Hunt says the airport must be increased but Wran will not let him. Last year Wran said the airport ought to be increased and this year he will not talk about it any more because he has changed his mind.

Yet if you point out to people that another runway would put aircraft out over Botany Bay where people do not live they say: “Arr, yeah, well we don’t want any expansion,” because they do not know. The sort of thing you get with airports is that you get a Bathurst Airport, which is a few miles out of town, and right off the end of the runway some clown has allowed houses to be built.

You take off right over their backyards. How long is it going to be before those people start writing to their local member saying: “We can’t sleep. Someone landed here at 3 am this morning. ” No one will look at these idiots and say it is their own self-inflicted problem.

The Labor member of Bankstown has bought or built a house right off the end of runway 05 at Bankstown, complained about aeroplane noise and finally someone managed to get that runway closed. It was open paddock off the end of that runway when I first started flying into Bankstown.

This is not progress. This is stupidity. The rest of the taxpayers in the community have to subsidise these people’s stupidity because airports are very noisy.

We have a great airport here. It is right in the middle of Sydney. Everyone can use it. It is where the people want to go. It is central, and it goes out over water. It is beautiful. It can come in over water too.

However, I have been pushing to pay air route fees. Aircraft above 12,500 pounds are in a different category money-wise. They are paying greater amounts of money and I think they are entitled to pay air route fees, just like an airliner.

I have begged to be able to pay just what an airliner pays. I do not want a discount or any money back, I do not want a subsidy because I am trying to promote tourism. I have begged to be able to pay full air route air fees – to be on the same footing as any airline operator, and not pay three times as much to get a lesser priority and to be relegated to a corner of the airfield on a bit of grass that I cannot even get passengers and clients out to.

Q: How do you get people on board?

A: We have to taxi from where we are, near the old tower by the fire station, round to Flight Facilities. At times we have been told that there is no room for us at Flight Facilities and there will not be for an hour. That is where we are supposed to operate from. The secretary of the Department of Transport, Mr Halton, said that the priorities at Sydney Airport were in the order of aircraft able to use it. Now that is a lie. It is a complete and utter distortion of the facts. The priorities are there for those that have the most pull. The commuter aircraft get the highest priority and yet we have been more or less moved out of the Flight Facilities general aviation area to make room for smaller private, charter and smaller aircraft that could easily be using Bankstown. Ninety per cent of the aircraft there could use Bankstown and we cannot. But we were the ones that were booted out because we are fairly big. The heavy charter industry is just being ignored. I will not say it is being persecuted.

Aircraft can set up there anytime they like and park there. I have seen VIP aircraft parked for two days in an area marked quite clearly “reserved for aircraft over 12,500 pounds – time limit one hour”.

Q: But you could get into Bankstown?

A: We cannot pull a full load out. We cannot use any taxiways to the north of the strip unless there is a dispensation, which is only granted if it has not rained for three days. We can only pick up on the military side of the airport. They have to block the main runway while we taxi back down it.

I have an aircraft on which I am forced to have two pilots for safety reasons, on which the all up weight has been cut down so that it will fly on one engine just after take-off whereas smaller aircraft will not, and then I am being sent into pandemonium over there.

That would be ridiculous.

And people want to catch it at Sydney Airport. I am only talking of three or tour movements a week. I do not want to be relegated to the other side of the world. Large groups of people do not want to go to Bankstown. How do you find Bankstown? There are no highways there. No public transport. You have to be an explorer to find Bankstown.

We have a place. The airlines do not want to do this low utilisation charter. They want to fly their Fokkers there, drop people off fly them away then come back. That puts the cost right through the roof.

More and more people through the week are finding that we can do things for them. They are harder to find and to get to. I cannot afford a million dollars worth of advertising. But Ulan coal mines found that we could fly 30 people up to Mudgee for the day and bring them back at a time that suited them, flexibly, and cheaper than an airline could do. I do not know how they found out but that is what they did. Those sorts of charters we are getting more and more of.

A group of Japanese wanted to go from here to Scone, visit an abattoir, and then Scone to Brisbane. There were 22 people. They could not have done that any other way. It would have taken them three days to do what we did in a day. They wanted to fly in a larger aircraft. They did not want to be in three smaller aircraft. They liked the fact that we had a hostess and a toilet. They liked the fact that we carry three pilots and they liked the fact that our performance standards are airline standards rather than something less.

You are probably aware that aircraft below 12,500 pounds do not have to be able to climb away on one engine. A Queen Air on an RPT operation, if he loses an engine straight after take-off out of a marginal strip, will hit the ground.

They are trying to work on that, but right now you can get aircraft on RPT that cannot climb away on one engine from an engine failure on lift-off. We must be able to do that.

Q: This is RPT or Reg 203 stuff?

A: RPT is Reg 203.

Q: Not quite?

A: Yes it is, let me tell you. I know because I cannot fly more than once every 28 days over an RPT run and that includes all Reg 203 runs. The ANOs say RPT. So regular public transport is something tor which schedules are published. As far as the department is concerned, it is RPT. They do not have an airline licence, but they are still regular public transport.

Q: You have obviously been over the finer points of this a number of times.

A: I get dragged over the finer points quite often. The aeroplane is starting to make money and the big point is that we are still in the building-up stages because it is a new concept.

Q: How long have you had it now?

A: One year. People are starting to learn what we can do for them.

Q: Where did it come from?

A: I bought it from Connair. It was in airline service with Connair.

People are now starting to learn the sort of things I have pointed out – that they can go to three or four towns in NSW. Our next step is to start selling it as a tourist vehicle and organise tours around NSW. We can show people more of NSW in two days than they would ever see in a coach and far more than the airlines could show them because we can go around the wheel. We take them to Canberra, up around to three or four towns, then back to Sydney again.

But there is always some problem. I am a small operator. I am trying to do a lot by myself. I cannot afford the staff and I spent most of my time trying to get a fair deal from the Department of Transport and I do not get out and do the other things. I am too busy watching my back.

We were shifted from the Flight Facilities area with no consultation. They just sent a letter saying there was not enough parking there. We find that is a lie. They are not shifting us for parking area. They have granted the land to another commuter terminal – in an area that is already overcrowded for parking.

No notice was given as to when this changeover would take place. My crew arrived back at 11 pm on Sunday night and they said “You do not park here any more. You park near the old tower. ”

I wrote, first of all asking if decisions were made unilaterally, or if the industry was consulted and received no answer. I also wrote and asked why we were not told when the change would take place so that an orderly change could be implemented. Again, no answer.

That is the sort of thing I have to fight all the time. That is why we called it Rebel Air – not because we want to cause trouble. We just want a fair and reasonable place. Most rebels do. That is what causes most rebellions – repression.

Q: Do you work on this full-time?

A: No. I am a second officer with an international airline.

Q: Are you rated on the DC-3 yourself?

A: Yes. I fly it. I had a command of it in the RAAF and I had a command with Jet Airlines of Australia flying RPT out of Melbourne in the 1970s. It is a good aeroplane. It does a good job. It has limitations. It is slow. Flying from here to Wagga or Tamworth, the fact that we take 20 minutes longer than the airline aircraft is of no interest.

When people start asking us to go to Perth, the fact that the crew have to have a day off on the way starts to become important. But that is not the role I am looking for – which is close in around NSW.

It is more comfortable than a Fokker, in general terms. It has more room, more headroom, more walk around the room, more leg room and people prefer it.

We took the Enfield bowlers from here Deniliquin and due to the fact that a competitor let me down with the hire of his aircraft, I had to put some on a Fokker and some on the DC-3. It was so arranged that everybody had a ride on a DC-3 and everybody had a ride on the Fokker.

A lot of them said that they preferred riding in the three – partly because it is their own group. We get footballers on board and they swear and yell over the PA. They do not really do anything destructive but other passengers would object to their presence. Groups like that are not as restrained on board us. The hostile hides up the front and slides a few beer cans down to them from time to time and they are happy.

Groups that want to go away like that have a better time on our aeroplane. They can carry on as they wish. Our weekends are no problem but I am sure the mid-week work will increase. These are the oncers. The people who will not use you again for maybe five years or maybe never again or who have never chartered an aircraft. They are the people that we have to educate into knowing that they can ring up and charter an airline-type aeroplane — that it will not cost them the earth, that we can do what they need to have done faster and more efficiently than the RPT services will, and we can do it safer and far more comfortably and far cheaper than the smaller aircraft can do it.

Q: Do you get into some small out-of-the-way strips that have not seen an aircraft that size for years?

A: No. Once again we are limited. Because we operate to airline standards we can only go to licensed airports, which usually means that airlines already go there. We have to get special permission to go into unlicensed airports. Commuter aircraft can operate into tighter and smaller strips than we are permitted to because we must operate to higher standards than they do.

They are the so-called RPT and the so-called magical standard but in many areas, our standards are higher than RPT standards. I like it that way. That is why I bought a bigger aeroplane. For years I have flown RPT in commuter operations and in some areas the pilot is concerned.

This aeroplane never operates in marginal areas like that. The statistical probability of losing an engine right at takeoff is fairly low but the pilot knows that if it quits then he is dead. And that is an area of concern to him. Our aeroplane never has an area like that – never. It is certified to the same standards as airline aircraft. Jet aircraft are certified to even higher levels of performance. But your life is never in the hands of an engine in the DC-3.

Q: Do you get some nostalgia buffs – people who want to fly just to fly in a DC-3?

A: Not so much. People want to see Sydney from the air or go on a champagne and chicken flight. We can do it cheaper than they could do it say in a Fokker. They enjoy it when they have done it. The nostalgia buffs want to talk about it and they want to talk about doing a flight. But you usually find they are the guys that do not ever really get around to doing it. They enjoy it not for nostalgia so much but for what it is after they have done it. It is a noisy aeroplane and it is a lot of fun. It flies slower and lower and they see things. But if the aeroplane was brand new and doing those things they would like it.

Q: What about the flight crew? Do you find a lot of people want to get themselves rated on DC-3?

A: Yes. That is where more of the nostalgia comes in. We get ex-airline pilots who want to fly for us because of the aeroplane. That is why I own it. Because I like it and I enjoy It. I believe I will make money out of it and I am in it to make money, but I always said I have enough money to survive. All you need is three meals and half a bed when it is all said and done. But I enjoy the aeroplane.

Q: What does your wife think about that?

A: She likes three meals and half a bed too. She is the operations manager around here and the hostess. She more or less runs it while I am away and provides the continuity. She was a Qantas hostie and is a private pilot.

Q: What about the reaction of people to the noise of the aircraft?

A: It is not as noisy as many commuter aircraft and they do not mind the noise. I get some reaction from people because the aeroplane is old. Some people who are frightened of flying anyway do like the comfort of knowing a plane is an airline aeroplane, or has jet engines. They think the DC-3 is old. I do get people that are a bit wary. But we find that they go for a flight and come back and they have had such a good time that they go again.

Q: What about starting the engine, when they backfire and blow some smoke? Does that bother people?

A: On one of our very early flights I flooded the starboard engine, and then I overheated the starter motor, so I had to let it cool. I had to walk down and say to the people “Well I’ve goofed. I flooded it and turned it over as long as I could. I have to let it cool for half an hour. You’ll just have to get off and go back to the terminal. ” Which left me with egg all over my face. But they all said “Oh yeah, that’s beaut” and wandered off and came back in half an hour and we fired it up and went away.

We point out to people that it is a safe aeroplane. I suppose the throwaway one-liner as the guy says, “It’s 40 years old. Is it safe?” and you say “Well how do you think it got to be 40 years old?”

Q: Assuming the whole thing develops and you do not get sick of it or anything like that, what happens in 10-15 years’ time when they are 50 to 55 years old and you have to think about something to replace DC-3s?

A: It will have a place wherever it has piston engines. While there are other piston engine aeroplanes around it will have a place because while ever people want to go somewhere for a day, modern technology means that if the aeroplane is worth $5 million they cannot have it for a day.

We are now 70 per cent of the price of an airline fare. If we go to 120 per cent of an airline fare – almost double what we are now – there would still be a place. As far as modern transportation in its present form exists, the DC-3 will have a place. Some technological breakthroughs will have to come to make the piston engine obsolete before the DC-3 will not have a place.

Q: Assuming the price of avgas stays within reasonable bounds?

A: Aviation turbine fuel has to stay within reasonable bounds too. If people are going to travel, we will be competitive. If energy gets to the stage where people cannot travel, then we will not be competitive but people will be staying at home so I do not see the DC-3 ever being purely obsolete, while contemporary means of transport stay basically the same.

Q: The Department of Transport knocked you back on regular flights between military bases?

A: I tried to run the defence forces charters which was pushing the law to its extremity in all areas. However, we were inside the law, I believed. You cannot publish a fare for service available for members of the public without the approval of the Minister. We restricted the service to defence forces personnel and people going to visit them – that is people who had access to military bases, which are not open to members of the public.

Q: Well, not all of them . . .

A: Exactly. And you cannot operate more than once every 28 days over an airline route. We were not going to do that but we were going to go SydneyNowra-Melbourne. I do not think that is the same as Sydney Melbourne. You cannot publish schedules. I do not think an itinerary for one trip constitutes a schedules. However, the Department of Transport did not say I could not do it but said they did not think it was legal and they did not think I was within the law. So I cancelled the trip and we are going to have further negotiations and they are going to have a good hard think about it. So that is where that one sits.

Q: So you are still happy and keen? You would do it again if you were starting over?

A: Like everything else it is about half as much fun and ten times as much work as I thought it would be. But I think I would do it again.

Q: Differently?

A: No. I would like to have more time to explore more avenues and to do more. There is always somebody who walks in and says “Why don’t you do such and such. ” They all think I am rude when I say “Why don’t you do it and I will pay you 10 per cent of what you get. ” They usually shut up then and go away, very quickly.

Q: You would be here about 50 per cent of the time?

A: Yes. Although there is always someone here 24 hours a day to look after the phone. I look after the policy. I go and box on with the politicians and say “We DO have a place in Sydney Airport and we are entitled to better priority than this and we do not want to pay four times the rate of an airline DC-3 in order to get a bit of grass and the lowest priority into the place. That is my job and I can do that in 50 per cent of the time. It is my job to go and see people to iron out problems, organise the engineering to recruit pilots and all that sort of thing.

If I did that all the time when I am back in Sydney I would probably devote more time than a full-time person would if he did it Monday to Friday five days a week. I am prepared to do that. I have no social life. I have no interests outside this aeroplane. I visit nobody, have nobody over to dinner, or have dinner with anybody who has not got something to do with Rebel Air. When I go away and am obliged to sit in Singapore for two days, I sit in my room and answer correspondence. Or,I go and see people there, or organise spares. I am always doing something.

Q: Where do you get the maintenance done?

A: The maintenance is coordinated by Hawker Pacific. I have a first officer who was with the RNZAF. He presently has the maintenance authority to do some of the routine things. Maintenance is not our biggest problem. You only really have to get maintenance done when the aeroplane is being worked. As long as the aeroplane is being worked I can afford the maintenance. We charge $510 an hour and that has a component for maintenance.

We do top-line maintenance. As a matter of fact some of the engineers have been surprised because I do not argue with them. We do everything they want to do. People think that maintenance is a black and white thing but a thing starts to be worn out the day after it is new. I work on the theory that we are going for reliability and we have an old aeroplane and we fix it.

I do not want it to break down in Bourke. I want it fixed in Sydney. We have not missed an on-time departure due to maintenance – touch wood – in 10 months. That is not bad going. Not many airlines can say that.

Maintenance is a very complicated area. It is an airline saying “We are going to disappoint those people and leave that aeroplane there and fix it because it’s broken,” whereas another airline might say, “It will get us to Sydney and we will fix it there. ”

The aeroplane does not go away for long periods of time and we make sure it is right when it leaves Sydney.

At $1000 a month, air navigation charges are our biggest worry our biggest setback, and our biggest curb to expansion. Everything else is more or less based on the flying we do, in which case we can afford it. If air navigation charges were based on the load we put on the facilities, then we could afford that too.

Q: You might find it hard to keep a job going as well as running an aeroplane when you are getting up to 1000 hours.

A: Oh No. That is not the problem. I do not do the flying. The sort of administration I do would not be any greater if I had 10 aeroplanes. Once I win the fight to get a fair priority into Sydney Airport those sort of things are no greater for more flying. Once I educate people about what the aeroplane can do and can see enough people for that sort of thing I would be doing the same for 1 O aeroplanes I do not ever foresee that I would have to leave my job or anything I would just hire pilots and engineers. I would organise policies. I would decide the way I want it run and then as it gets bigger you can afford to get people to do it for you.

Q: Would you be able to get 10 serviceable civil DC-3’s in Australia?

A: There would be 20 still around. If I had the work for it, about 10 military ones are coming up. I could convert those. Provided the Government does not use my tax money to blow them up. They were going to use them for target practice. Here we are, needing spare parts, requiring more aeroplanes, asking them to sell them so that we can service the public and get a decent sort of a tourist venture going, and they are considering using them for target practice.