by Jim Eames
Norm Field vividly remembers how his particular training captain, Ted Harding, took him through his conversion from first officer to captain. ‘Coming around and turning to line up for the final approach, you put the flaps out—which made the aircraft balloon—and you risked losing your aiming point on the runway because the nose would come 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.’
‘When it was your crash mate’s turn you watched closely and if he made any mistakes you learned from him and vice versa. (As it happened Field’s ‘crash mate’ did experience some difficulty countering the ballooning effect, with Field hoping he wouldn’t have a similar problem handling it.)
‘You might be several hours in the air, with a requirement to do twenty cross-wind landings, exchanging seats with your crash mate when it was your turn, after which came the on-ground debrief, which could be another harrowing experience,’ says Field.
One training captain, Eric Robinson, had a booming voice and Field remembers waiting outside the room listening to Robinson debriefing one of his crash mates: ‘As long as your arse points to the ground you’ll never make it,’ came the voice from behind the door, probably largely designed to shock the unfortunate trainee into performing better.
‘I wondered if I would cop it next,’ recalls Field.
While acknowledging it was tough, Field acknowledges the Qantas training was excellent, although there are those who will admit Avalon had its ‘dark’ side, which perhaps had more to do with the personalities of some of the training captains than the nature of the training. Avalon, in fact, would become known among Qantas aircrew as the Bay of Pigs, something of a play on both the adjacent Corio Bay and a small group of its training personnel who appeared to go out of their way to make life difficult for the newcomers, sometimes for not quite the right reasons.
What needs to be remembered here is that the senior pilot ranks of the Qantas of the 1960s and early 1970s were dominated to a large extent by former World War II airmen, many of them highly decorated.
The majority of these men flew the line on the airline’s international route, were excellent mentors to their first and second officers and were only too happy to pass on their vast experience. This was also true of some of the check and training captains, but like any such community, there were the exceptions who stood on ceremony to the point of pomposity, were prone to place a high value on their status, took themselves very seriously and tended to treat their cockpit comrades as somewhat lower forms of life. The good ones, of course, went out of their way to assist and instil confidence; others went out of their way to make life miserable for those ‘brought before them’.
Trevor Merton claims every Qantas pilot who had the misfortune to go through a promotion or training program with several of the less desirable captains would reach a point where he would wonder to himself whether it was all worth it. ‘It was perfect misery. They absolutely delighted in taking you to the breaking point.’ At the same time Merton admits it was legitimate to test people to a certain degree, but not beyond the degree of practicality.
Merton was not alone. Field, already an experienced captain on DC-4s, remembers arriving at Avalon for his conversion to the 707 to be met by training captain Graham Lance as they climbed aboard: ‘I just want to let you know I had a tough time being checked out myself and I have never passed anyone on their first attempt.’
‘Well, thanks for letting me know that at this stage, Graham,’ replied Field, hardly thankful for the offering.
Gordon Power admits aviation can be a cruel profession and a pilot needed to have superb confidence in his ability if he was to survive. ‘A pilot’s performance is constantly being judged, often harshly by others who indicate either audibly, usually loudly, or by body language that our abilities are non-existent and would be unlikely to qualify as the driver of a night cart, the latter being delivered in a language that would make a ship’s stoker blush.
‘I have seen several pilots, including captains, who have been psychologically destroyed by these types of verbal attacks and their careers lost.’
David Howells, an experienced former Fleet Air Arm pilot is even more scathing about the ability of several of the captains assigned to the training role: ‘There were some people who should never have been senior training checks at all,’ says Howells, citing incidents where an aircraft had been taken down to as low as 100 feet on a non–precision landing approach in poor visibility.
‘The first time they couldn’t see anything and the next time they landed halfway down the runway and came to a juddering halt against a pile of rocks at the end of it. Ten minutes later there was hardly a cloud in the sky. The Department of Civil Aviation would have had a field day.’
As in the case of Norm Field, prior experience often didn’t account for much when it came to several members of a close-knit cartel of training captains referred to derogatively as ‘the counts’. Ken Lewis, who joined the airline as cabin crew and would later become the airline’s highly respected safety chief, puts it bluntly:
‘If they didn’t like the “cut of your jib”, it often didn’t matter much how well you performed,’ he says. Lewis cited the case of Bunny Lee, a highly decorated World War II pilot and experienced DC-4 captain, who arrived for command training on the 707. Lee qualified at his first attempt but, not one to mince words, took the opportunity over a beer that evening to tell them what he thought of their methodology. ‘The next day he was given another check ride and referred back to the DC-4. It was several years later before he made it onto the 707.’
Perhaps a comment by Trevor Merton goes some way to explaining life as it existed in the hierarchy of Qantas cockpits in those days: ‘You could tell a joke as a second officer and no one would laugh. Same joke as a first officer—a polite titter of laughter. Same joke as a senior check captain and everyone roared laughing.’
Airmen being airmen, Merton wasn’t the only one who could see the funny side. Old pilots remember New Zealand-born Roly Probert, who at one stage controlled the training program, having a tendency to take himself extremely seriously, often to the point of pomposity. Gordon Power recalls flying on a Boeing 747 as a passenger with another captain and a first officer to Avalon for their final command checks, with Probert at the controls of the aircraft out of Mascot. Halfway to Avalon, Power delegated the first officer, as the most junior, to take cups of tea up to those on the flight deck. A few minutes later the first officer was back, still with one cup of tea, which turned out to be that originally destined for Probert who had apparently declined the offer with words to the effect: ‘I’m flying.’
When quizzed why he hadn’t left Probert’s cup of tea there anyway, the first officer replied: ‘Would you interrupt Rembrandt when he was creating a masterpiece?’
Such character traits aside, the lessons learnt in training would become part of a culture that had existed in Qantas from its earliest days. Those early check captains would be responsible for transitioning the airline into a jet era during which Qantas would create an impeccable record for safety in the air, an era where it would be fatality-free, where new challenges and hazards would be overcome.
The attrition rate for pilots might have been high, but so were the consequences of landing short in a loaded Boeing 707 buffeted by violent cross-winds.
David Shrubb, who would later follow them as a training manager, is convinced pilots like Eric Robinson, Roly Probert, Alan Emmerick, Len McNeil and Dick Lucas, names the public have never heard of, were the main reason Qantas did not have a serious undershoot accident like most of the ‘great airlines’ did in those transitional days.
Many would suggest also it was through engineering and maintenance, areas that are vital if an airline is going to be not only safe, but also to maintain an operational culture the envy of many other world airlines. In Qantas’s case, it was a culture that dated from its very earliest days.
8
It’s a pivotal, four-minute scene in the Academy Award–winning movie Rain Man, starring Dustin Hoffman and Tom Cruise.
Hoffman, playing the role of Raymond Babbitt, an autistic savant, panics when Cruise, playing his brother Charlie, tries to get him to board a flight from Cincinnati to Los Angeles. Raymond has memorised every airline crash statistic and refuses to board several airlines suggested by Charlie, insisting: ‘Qantas never crashes.’
Faced with the dilemma that Qantas doesn’t fly from Cincinnati to Los Angeles, the characters are forced to drive. Although Hoffman’s statement is only true to a point, it further cements the Australian airline’s reputation for safety and demonstrates the value to be gained publicly from an aspect of airline operations that most airlines themselves are reluctant to talk about.
But the fact that Hoffman speaking those three words actually became the chosen extract to be watched by millions during the 1989 Academy Award presentation was an advertising coup any airline in the world would have paid a fortune for.
It all had the most innocent of beginnings.
American Ernie Beyl’s job as public relations manager for Qantas in the United States was to do all he could to promote the airline in one of the toughest markets in the world, a world where this relatively small foreign carrier had to compete for passenger revenue with some of the largest airlines of the world. There could be no comparison in size. Over the years the United States had thrown a succession of airlines on the US-to-Australia route, giants like Pan American, Continental and American Airlines to name a few. Achieving public recognition of the Australian minnow against such opposition in the vast US market often called for some bizarre tactics. Easy-going Beyl had even found himself on occasions squeezing his two-metre frame into, of all things, a koala suit, in an effort to make some impact at an airline promotional function. In fact, beyond the large kangaroo on the Qantas logo, the koala was one of the few images that appeared to resonate with Americans, a situation that dated back to a series of advertisements launched by the Australian carrier in the 1960s.
Groundbreaking in its negative concept, it was known as the ‘I Hate Qantas’ campaign and was the brainchild of the airline’s regional chief for the Americas, Hugh Birch, and Qantas’s advertising agency in the United States, Cunningham & Walsh. Hugh Birch was one of those colourful characters an airline colleague once described as ‘straight out of central casting’. He had come to Qantas with an impressive record as a pilot in World War II, flown numerous pioneering flights in the airline’s flying boat days, had the looks of Errol Flynn and the personality to match—all factors which made him instantly popular with Americans.
With the sheer marketing ‘spend’ of the major US airlines swamping the market to Australia, Birch and Cunningham & Walsh turned to that other unique Australian marsupial, the koala, to supplement the Qantas kangaroo. But their chosen koala would be the grumpiest version you could find and would be prepared to go to great lengths to ‘discourage’ American tourists from disturbing his peace and tranquillity. And it was all Qantas’s fault!
For Qantas, which had six Boeing 707 services out of San Francisco to Sydney when the campaign was launched on television and print in 1967, it was an instant success.
Here was this cuddly koala, under a quote: ‘I Hate Qantas’, appealing to Americans: ‘I am an Australian. A very sensitive Australian. What I like is peace. And quiet. And ferny places and secret trees. Which is mostly what I’ve gotten up to now.’ Over subsequent years he would appear wearing a mask and a snorkel, a backpack, a Hawaiian shirt with a camera clung over his shoulder and even holding an Australian Rules football, all the time complaining about what Qantas was doing to make his life miserable.
Nothing about Qantas was sacred. When the airline boasted about the fact that it now had more Boeing 747s on the route than any other airline, Teddy, as he was known, countered with: ‘How about a little modesty?’ Under another print advertisement showing all nineteen crew of Qantas pilots and cabin crew standing in uniform in front of their 747, he complained: ‘Looks like four cops, three meter maids, a desk clerk and an eleven-piece band.’ But it would be the television commercials that would steal the hearts of Americans as Teddy voiced his complaints while sitting in the cockpit, in the cabin, or staring down from the overhead luggage rack.
The original Teddy commercial starred an American-born koala from the San Diego Zoo, one of the few places outside Australia ever to breed them. Later, as the commercials had him on site at Australian beaches, the Great Barrier Reef, the Sydney Opera House and even Alice Springs, Australian koalas were used, but creating these television commercials presented significant challenges for film teams.
For a start, there’s no such animal as a trained koala and although some are accustomed to being handled by humans, getting them to actually ‘act’ is far from easy. They found giving the chosen animal a eucalyptus leaf to chew could be enough to move his mouth to approximate speech to enable American comedian Howie Morris to voice-over the ‘I Hate Qantas’ line. The authenticity of an Australian accent had to be abandoned as the use of an American accent was considered to provide better clarity for Americans, who would be hearing it everywhere from Brooklyn to South Carolina.
Getting Teddy to turn and look over his shoulder with a ‘disdainful stare’ was achieved by rattling a bunch of keys behind him, while a trail of broken gum leaves leading to a bigger pile at the end was often enough to get him moving in a particular direction.
Although a number of koalas from San Diego would be used over the time of the commercials there was an America-wide public reaction when the original Teddy died in 1976. The final measure of success came in a letter from a Bronx, New York, schoolteacher who told how she’d been giving a lesson on animals to her class. When she held up a picture of a koala, the children broke out in unison: ‘That’s a Qantas.’
But, in 1987, the ‘I hate Qantas campaign’ was little beyond a plaque on Ernie Beyl’s wall as he rifled through some paperwork in his San Francisco office one afternoon, when the phone rang.
Someone was calling from Hollywood. He was working on a film and wanted to know whether it was true Qantas had never had a crash or a fatality.
‘Yes, but why do you ask?’ Beyl replied. He received no answer to the question but at least managed to gouge out of the caller the name of the film’s producer, Mark Johnson.
Good public relations people, particularly those who have a journalistic background, have a ‘sniff antenna’ that reacts when it detects there might be a background story in there somewhere. Ernie Beyl found his own antenna was starting to prompt him to take this further.
It took days to track down Mark Johnson on the telephone but it was time well spent. ‘He was charming, told me about a film called Rain Man and said the director, Barry Levinson, was considering a scene where Dustin Hoffman, who was playing an autistic savant, says he wants to fly Qantas from the Mid-West to Los Angeles.’
‘When his brother, played by Cruise asks why, Hoffman can say, “because they never crash.”’
Johnson explained that both he and Levinson liked Australia and the idea of Qantas flying on such a sector had a humorous aspect to it in the script. By this time Beyl’s ‘antenna’ was starting to flutter as he could see the value if it all worked. Tentatively, because his promotions budget was extremely limited, he asked what he might have to do to have that line put in the movie, expecting the answer might be more than he could afford in US dollars.
‘Tell me all about Qantas and I’ll see what I can do,’ was Johnson’s reply.
Within hours a screed from Beyl containing the entire Qantas history was on its way to Los Angeles. Johnson called with a quick thank you and then—silence.
It was almost a year later before Johnson called again with one of the shortest phone calls Ernie Beyl had ever received. ‘Go see the movie,’ he said. ‘You’ll like it.’ He didn’t say anything else.
> Beyl went to see the movie and there it was.
‘I was something of a hero. I called Mark Johnson and thanked him, offered him a free trip first class anywhere on the Qantas network but he politely declined, saying he was too busy. I promised the offer would remain, so maybe some day. He said maybe.
Twelve months later when Beyl heard Rain Man had been nominated for an Academy Award, he called Johnson again, acutely aware of the fact that, as each film being nominated in the Best Picture category was announced, a short scene was played. Could Beyl live in hope it might be the airport scene?
Johnson explained there were many factors that went into that choice—timing, emphasis, showing the actors to best advantage. And of course, Dustin Hoffman would have to approve.
Beyl and his boss, Qantas regional vice president for the Americas, George Howling, along with every other Qantas employee within reach of a television, was glued to the screen that night in 1989 and there it was—the Hoffman airport scene and the line ‘Qantas never crashes’, followed by four Oscars: best picture, best original screenplay, best director and Dustin Hoffman as best actor.
Perhaps understandably, it took Beyl some time to track down Johnson at the Beverly Hills Hotel next morning and, after thanking him profusely, he reminded him of the travel offer. ‘In an embarrassed tone, he said it wasn’t necessary and, besides, he was still too busy.’ When Beyl asked what he was going to do when he took some holidays, Johnson said he would probably fly out Mid-West to visit family.
Months went by and Beyl called again. This time Johnson gave in and said he would perhaps take the family to Tahiti. Four first-class return tickets were on their way within hours.
It was a small price to pay for exposure that Qantas’s San Francisco staff estimate netted the airline more than a million dollars in marketing exposure in the vast US market and one for which any US carrier would have paid a high price. As it turned out, their reaction was palpable, with the New York Times reporting that at least fifteen major US airlines actually cut the scene from the version being shown on their in-flight movie channels, a decision Levinson described in the Times article as ‘ridiculous’.