iscover
The "Kyeema" impact site itself, looking back in the direction offlight. The photograph was taken the morning after the accident. The cuNing tree branch lopped offby "Kyeema's"starboardwing on thefar leftofthe picture can still be identified today. (Herald and Weekly Times)
Air Safety Kyeema Air Disaster’s 55th Anniversary
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The Kyeema – A Message For Today?
Fifty-five years ago this month, the Douglas DC-2, VH-UYC ‘Kyeema’ owned by Airlines of Australia and operated by Australian National Airways, plunged into the top of Mt Dandenong while letting down through cloud at the end of a flight from Parafield to Essendon.
All 18 people aboard-four crew and 14 passengers-died instantly in the impact and conflagration, making it Australia’s worst air tragedy to that time. Arguably the most significant in our aviation history still, the disaster shocked the entire nation, raising an enormous public outcry. The findings of the Inquiry that followed were to give birth to the Department of Civil Aviation itself and to its system of air traffic control-a system that remained unique in the world until the advent of today’s Civil Aviation Authority.
Paradoxically, despite the accident’s far reaching effects and its nearness to a major city, no effort was made to permanently mark the site, and with the passing of time its actual location gradually faded from public memory-until a memorial cairn was unveiled on the mountain in 1978. Macarthur Job, a Senior Inspector of Air Safety with the former Department of Civil Aviation, tells of rediscovering the site of the crash 40 years after it happened.
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