New Zealand News

The quest for a Strikemaster replacement has gone on for at least four years, hamstrung by financial considerations and political backbiting. Even after the Tizard announcement, Opposition defence spokesman, Mr Don McKinnon, described the choice as too “lavish” and unlikely to provide additional employment in New Zealand. The M339C was chosen from eleven aircraft designs submitted by ten companies. The Minister said that the machine was best suited to the Services’ requirements for a robust and versatile trainer able to take a trainee up to the wings stage and then on the ‘fighter lean-in’.

Project cost for the aircraft is believed to be budgeted at about $NZ260m. Mr Tizard said that rigid cost restraints had been set, with a precise ceiling and payments to be spread over a number of years. The figure would also include the cost of spares and support equipment. The RNZAF hopes that the first aircraft will be delivered this year, with others arriving throughout 1991.

Other aircraft considered by the so-called Project Falcon committee were the FMA Pampa from Argentina, Brazil’s Embraer EMB-312 Tucano, the joint Swiss-Australian PC-9, the Shorts Tucano from Britain, Belgium’s Promavia Jet Squalus, Italy’s Agusta S211, Spain’s Casa C101 Aviojet, Dornier’s Alpha Jet from Germany and Britain’s BAe Hawk.

Pa up and Running

After what looked like several years of terminal decline, Pacific Aerospace’s aircraft manufacturing facility is up again and running. The Hamilton-based company began the new decade by shipping six new Fletcher Fu24 agricultural aircraft to the Thai Department of Agriculture and Fisheries.

At the end of January, it was due to deliver three Crescos (the turbine powered Fletcher variant) to the Bangladesh Department of Agriculture’s plant protection wings. Other orders were also in the pipeline. Waiting in the wings too was the postponed order for 12 CT-4B trainer aircraft originally sought by the AnsettBAe flying school at Tamworth (refer pp. 12 and 106 Jan 90 AA). The last CT-4s were built in the 1970s. The last Fu24 was completed in 1983 and theCrescolinehadbeendormantsince 1985.

Looking towards renewed global sales for the Airtrainer, the company is not only adapting a spare airframe to take a turbine engine for developmental purposes but it is also signing a new variant with a retractable undercarriage.

PP:s chief executive, Mr Andrew Hyde, declined at this stage to disclose details of the retractable undercarriage machine (to be known as the CT-4R) which was expected to fly towards the end of 1990. However, combined with turbine power (the CT-4C), the type is expected to move several rungs up the performance ladder as a classy sport and aerobatic machine.

Both the Fletcher orders were won by tender, the Bangladesh one specifying a turbine powered and multi-purpose capability. Prior to cutting metal for new aircraft, the factory was fully employed for a year making spares and refurbishing twenty four Fletchers back to a nil hour state.

Air NZ Confirms 737 Orders

Air New Zealand has confirmed a major order for new Boeing 737s largely aimed at overcoming niggling noise problems. The airline has ordered six of the aircraft for delivery in 1993 and 1994 and has options on two more which would be available in 1996.

The airline says that it has two years in which to specify which of the series they will be but says that it will be one of the quieter, later models the 300, 400 or 500, in order to meet Chapter 3 noise levels. The airline’s present fleet is eleven Boeing 737-200s which, though comparatively young, do not meet noise demands.

Wellington City Council is introducing a bylaw this year which will force the airline to phase out the 200 Series services into Wellington by 1994 and the Government is developing new noise level regulations for other airports.

In concert with the new orders, the airline is planning to dispose of a number of the 200 Series fleet about the delivery time. Some may be leased. The long-term intention is to have a total fleet of the later model 737s by the end of the 1990s.

Catalina Resurrect Ion

In the mid 1960s, the RNZAF chopped up a dozen PBY-5A Catalinas which had been sitting out at Hobsonville since the war years. The sight of the mangled remains being bulldozed into a massive grave has haunted vintage connoisseurs since – not the least of them those airmen involved in assembling the collection of World War II aircraft for the Service’s museum at Wigram.

Several years ago, the Service began scouring the world for an old Catalina to refurbish. It eventually settled on one which was lying on the edge of a Port Moresby airfield. It was hardly a lucky find-the aircraft had been used by the local crash fire service for practice. Virtually all the skinning had been burnt away leaving a blackened skeleton of stringers, formers and ribs. Nevertheless, it was shipped back to Auckland and the slow process of restoration began, much of it under airframe fitter, Warrant Officer Dusty Dawson.

Early in January, the fuselage – looking as if it had come straight out of the Californian factory-was rolled out in preparation for shipping to Christchurch. It has been completely reskinned and fitted with a tailplane obtained from a crashed aircraft in Australia. Much of the equipment was obtained by ex-airmen members of the Hobsonville Old Boys Association, some of it, like a precision compass, was obviously souvenirs. One of the bubble side turrets came from a garden where it had been used as a greenhouse. The main plane work has yet to begin but the devastation is so thorough that the restorers are considering manufacturing a new set from scratch.

Air Force Losses Hit Flying

A drain of RNZAF personnel to Civvy Street was becoming so acute late last year that questions were being prompted about the maintenance of safety standards. It was particularly desperate at RNZAF Base Auckland, home of the transport and maritime surveillance squadrons.

The main problem was that the haemorrhaging was among the most valued people, skilled aircraft technicians and experienced aircrew of around the flight commander and slightly higher stage. At Christmas, the Service was counting itself short of 107 officers and 158 other ranks. The worldwide demand for pilots and an upturning economy was held responsible.

Service sources said that while they accepted the cyclical nature of the shortage, this cycle was particularly damaging because of the level of experience being lost. Cutbacks in flying hours have resulted and long-term planning restricted.

Three years ago the Service partially stemmed a similar drain by offering a $NZ20,000 bonus to aircrew to stay in an extra year but for obvious reasons the Ministry wants to remove the impression this could become a repeating feature.

Erebus Jigsaw Piece Surfaces

Ten years after the Mount Erebus DC-10 crash, a vital missing link in the evidence has turned up. It reinforces the finding of the Royal Commissioner, Mr Peter Mahon, that Captain Jim Collins spent the night before the fatal flight laboriously plotting the computerised route of the flight on a large chart – a route which was actually being changed the same night without his knowledge.

The missing jigsaw is an American chart, Global Navigation Chart 21N (GNC21N), which Collins’ daughters watched him working on with ‘measuring’ instruments. No such chart was issued to the crew and none was found at the crash site. The accident inspector’s report ignored the Collins girls’ claim that they had seen their father working on the chart but it was taken into account by the Mahon inquiry.

Some years later, one of the Collins’ girls unhesitatingly identified the distinctive GNC21N when one was shown her, yet the absence of absolute proof that one was seen by Collins and perhaps taken aboard the aircraft always left an element of doubt.

Now a retired helicopter pilot, Peter Tait, has confirmed that he gave one of the first officers aboard the aircraft a GNC21N. Tait was friendly with First Officer Graeme Lucas. They had discussed the upcoming Antarctic flight and Tait loaned him the chart so that Lucas could report back on the condition of certain areas they would pass over – Tait was then chief pilot for a helicopter company operating extensively in Antarctica.

Almost certainly, Lucas would have loaned GNC21N to his captain for study. This particular chart was, in Tait’s words, “as scarce as hen’s teeth”, and the best available for Antarctic flying.

So why has this crucial evidence taken so long to come to light? Police did take a statement from Tait but it was mainly about a radio conversation he had with the crew of the ill-fated airliner as it flew overhead southwards. The loan of the chart was only mentioned very briefly and was overlooked in the mass of more than 300 outside statements taken for the inquiry. Also while the Mahon Inquiry was sitting Peter Tait was away flying, much of the time in Antarctica. It was much later before he realised the importance of the elusive GNC21N.

Safety Storm Deepens

Safety features increasingly in this column – for the plain reason that it has become a raging topic in New Zealand. There have been numerous warnings in recent times by operators that safety was being jeopardised by the constant revamping of regulatory authorities, reductions in staff and punitive charges. The warnings are now being borne out with a vengeance.

Latest in an horrific train of small airliner accidents was the mid-air collision between two sightseeing aircraft over Milford Sound. One of the Cessnas plunged into the fiord killing the pilot and six Japanese tourists. The other aircraft, also with six passengers aboard, just made it back to Te Anau.

Only four months earlier in the same area, ten were killed when an Air Aspiring aircraft for no readily apparent reason plunged into the flanks of a mountain and was buried in the avalanche it set off. During 1989, 46 people were killed in light aircraft accidents, 27 of them on tourist flights.

While the Minister of Transport, Mr Bill Jeffries, and his officers point to no direct linkages between the accidents and the regulatory changes, operators are beginning to suspect that the whole environment of rapid change and skimpy surveillance is very much the cause.

Predictably, the Milford Sound accident brought a knee jerk reaction. “Perhaps it was about time the minimum age for passenger transport pilots should be looked at,” said the Minister the pilot of the Milford Sound aircraft was aged 21).

Meanwhile, following an independent survey on safety by Australian and New Zealand consultants, Mr Jeffries announced that 15 extra staff would be added to the Air Transport Division. The consultants had been called in following a 1988 crash in which a FoxpineAir Charter aircraft killed ten including three children. The badly overloaded machine was on a night flight from Hamilton to Wanganui.

In the move to deregulation and staff reductions, the authority has moved from close monitoring of technical and operational matters to systems in which the onus is laid on operators to impose proper procedures and standards. Under new legislation, the ‘inspector’ role is to be shed in favour of the quaintly named title ‘safety auditor’.

Old operators maintain that safety interests would be best served by a little common sense – setting up a stand alone aviation authority separate from the monolithic Ministry of Transport; slowing down the rigid user pays process and returning to the authority experienced aviation hands to balance out the preponderance of professional bureaucrats.

Profits Down

Air New Zealand’s chairman, Mr Bob Matthew, has indicated that the airline’s first annual profit since privatisation could be about 10% down on the forecast for the March year of $95. 8m. The hint came when the airline announced its half year result which showed a 25. 8% downturn in the unaudited tax paid profit of $19,091,000. Mr Matthew said that the earlier forecast should have been seen in the context of a 10% plus or minus range.

However, the directors’ report said that there was no reason to revise an earlier forecast that a dividend of 11. 5 cents would be paid on each of the public float shares.

The only turnover growth came from international services and it would not be easy in the short term to achieve significant growth while the domestic services and the cargo market remained downturned and cost increases continued.

Measures taken to contain adecline in margins included transferring Boeing 767 aircraft to routes which could not sustain 747s and expanding services to and from high growth Asian centres.

Meanwhile, the Mount Cook Group (which is majority owned by Air New Zealand) traded at a small profit over the same first six months of the financial year. The company, owner of Mount Cook Airlines, made $227,000 profit, a turnaround from the $1. 6m loss in the same period of the previous year

Briefs

• Japan Air Lines has begun services into Christchurch Airport operating jointly with Air New Zealand. The weekly service to and from Tokyo uses an Air New Zealand Boeing 747.

• Mr Gary Smith has been appointed manager of Ansett New Zealand replacing Mr John Bucnanan who was appointed chief executive on an interim basis last year. Mr Smith was previously assistant general manager administration and finance of Ansett Airlines of Australia.

• The Airways Corporation has appointed Mr Andrew Makin as chief executive replacing Mr Frank Baldwin who has retired. Mr Makin, a British resident of Canada for fifteen years, was the general manager of a marketing consultancy