Bay of Pigs

Pilot training at Avalon would be largely responsible for establishing Qantas’s muchadmired safety record through the jet era

The current debate surrounding the extensive role of simulators in pilot check and training has prompted many former Qantas pilots to cast their minds back to Boeing 707 training at Avalon, near Geelong in the 1960s and ’70s.

For some it has mixed memories – a place of continual concentration and tension due to the risk of failure, heightened at times by the personalities of some of the check and training captains of those days. It was largely this latter attribute which earned Avalon the title of the Bay of Pigs.