Bay of Pigs

But while Avalon could hardly be considered a ‘home away from home’, there is little doubt that the training regime there would be largely responsible for establishing Qantas’s much-admired safety record through the jet era, a reputation which the Qantas of today still basks in.

Those were the days of hands-on flying training with sophisticated flight simulators years into the future, with no ability to call up a computer-generated image of any airport in the world by inserting a few numbers.

Thus, during heavy training demands, a 707 could be based at Avalon for some weeks at a time as a succession of aircrew were put through their command or promotional training, often flying at the very margin of safety for a big jet aircraft.

While the 707 might be remembered with fondness by those who flew her, they would be the first to admit she could hardly be compared to today’s counterparts.

‘Flying by cable’ was the term occasionally used, which meant no hydraulics and stiff controls which required lots of input and still resulted in considerable time lag between that input and the aircraft’s reaction.

Carrying out a crosswind landing, which Avalon offered in spades, took considerable handling skills and was a perfect introduction to what the person in the right hand seat would need to master the vagaries of weather throughout Qantas’s world network.

One of the many exercises for command training would have the check captain position the aircraft over Corio Bay at around 4,000ft, point it at the general direction of Avalon, and, with 250kt on the clock, direct the prospective commander to arrive at the runway threshold without applying thrust until final approach.

The idea was to be able to position the aircraft through the circuit with judicious use of landing gear and flaps. Whether it was command training or promotion to first officer, the check captains made it tough.

Former pilots like Gordon Power and Norm Field remember it as a structured process; an initial briefing on the characteristics of the swept wing jet aircraft, its handling peculiarities at low level and the performance differences between piston engines and jets, although some experienced former RAAF and RAN jet pilots could be seen rolling their eyes during part of the process!

Once airborne all the flying was at low level and if the crosswind increases, all the better.

Usually two pilots would be undergoing checks, with your compatriot known as your ‘crash mate.’ Norm Field vividly remembers his training captain Ted Harding taking him through his training from first officer to captain.

“Coming around to line up for final approach you put the flaps out which made the aircraft balloon with the risk of losing your aiming point on the runway as the nose came up. Ted would hammer it home that this is what is going to happen in a bad weather situation anyway and you needed to handle it.”

Such sequences might mean several hours in the air with up to 20 cross wind landings as you exchanged seats with your ‘crash mate.’

As another former captain commented: “With a lot of the flying near stall speed, especially when asymmetric, a lot of people frightened themselves.”

While Field would describe captains like Ted Harding as tough but fair, Avalon’s ‘dark’ side, as attested by the Bay of Pigs reference, was often in evidence, largely due to the fact that much of Qantas’s senior pilot ranks in the ’60s and ’70s was dominated by former World War 2 airmen, many of whom were highly decorated and who could go out of their way to make life miserable for those ‘brought before them’.

Trevor Merton, who Gordon Power would describe as one of the finest pilots with whom he flew, has suggested that every Qantas pilot who had the misfortune to be allocated to one of the less desirable captains would reach a point where he would find himself wondering whether it was all worth it.

Despite this, however, Avalon would be remembered as critical in the years that followed in establishing the critical standards which would earn Qantas an enviable reputation in the air.

Subsequent training managers like David Shrubb pay tribute to those early training days as the main reason Qantas never suffered a serious undershoot accident as other airlines did in those transitional days.

Much of it would be due also to other veterans of the war like Alan Wharton who would lead the company’s pilots’ ranks as director of flight operations for almost two decades. Wharton, himself a decorated Bomber Command pilot, was one of the earliest to espouse the view that airline pilots should be trained specifically with that job in mind.

“That is, they have picked up no bad habits,” he would explain. But of course, things had to change, and for a variety of reasons, as the airline moved through the early 747 days, simulators reached such an astounding degree of sophistication while the massive expense of devoting an aircraft like the 747 to dedicated training at Avalon became uneconomic.

Training therefore had to be rationalised as competition increased, profit margins dropped, and much has changed since those old check and training captains would bark into the ear of the errant first officer who made a mistake on approach to Avalon. Which leads me to tell my favourite hands-on pilot story recalled by Roger Carmichael from his days as a first officer on 707s flying between Bermuda and London, with Tony Jennings as captain.

As they approached Heathrow one March morning they were confronted by crosswinds gusting up to 50kt, the short runway was closed and no-one else was landing or taking off. As they joined the ILS at around 1,000ft, the 707 was crabbing so much Carmichael could look straight down the runway from his window in the right hand seat, prompting him to offer:

“Tony, if I was doing this landing I would be diverting to Prestwick.” “Son, that’s the reason I’m doing the landing,” was the terse reply.

Carmichael was certain all at Heathrow had come out that day to see the aircraft crash but watched in awe as, at the very last moment Jennings brought his great boot down on the pedal and straightened the Boeing out. “It was just magical flying,” says Carmichael.

Jennings’ efforts perhaps underline the days when pilots learned to fly an aeroplane themselves rather than having the aeroplane fly them, and they relished the experience of it all.

That said there have been occasions which prove such talent is not totally lost. When Qantas’s first 747-400, which broke the world long distance record on its delivery flight from London to Sydney, was to be ‘put out to pasture’ at the Historical Aircraft Restoration Society’s establishment at Albion Park, the contrasts could not have been greater.

That record-breaking flight in 1989 had been a nonstop 20 hours, nine minutes and five seconds. This last flight was to be around 16 or 17 minutes, not only short but flying through uncontrolled airspace to an airport with no air traffic control, no landing aids and, by 747 standards at least, a short runway.

To prepare for the flight the four‑man crew undertook six sessions of around four hours each in the company’s flight simulator, then on the day before the flight flew on a practice run in the HARS Neptune to provide them with the opportunity to ‘eyeball’ the approach path.

The following day, March 8 2015, VH-OJA City of Canberra touched down right on the runway threshold in a perfectly good, old fashioned, visual approach, stick and rudder, hands-on landing.

All the flying was at low level and if the crosswind increases, all the better.