82 AUSTRALIAN AVIATION DECEMBER 2017Yesteryear ERIC ALLEN
A bitter disappointment
The Sud Caravelle’s failed Australian introduction
A
fter attempts to introduce
the de Havilland Comet
to both international
and Australian domestic
services had failed, the next
opportunity for a jet airliner
in Australia centred on the French
Sud Caravelle.
Trans-Australia Airlines had
been interested in the Caravelle
since 1954 when John Watkins, the
airline’s technical superintendent,
visited Toulouse and saw the two
prototypes under construction. He
discussed the specifications and
capabilities with the designers and
had a look at the engineering that
was going into them and was very
impressed.
An existing problem for TAA
was the Adelaide-Perth sector,
Watkins explained to this writer
many years ago.
“We did operate the Viscount
service usually non-stop Adelaide
to Perth, but when the prevailing
wind from the west was particularly
strong there were occasions when
we had to refuel at Kalgoorlie.
And of course this gave the service
a bad name and we could never
carry a full payload anyway on that
run. We adopted the technique of
re-flightplanning over Kalgoorlie
[whereby] we could have returned
to Kalgoorlie if necessary or
gone into Perth with a 15 per centreserve. But it wasn’t the right
aeroplane for the run.
“It became clear from our route
studies that the Caravelle would
really be in its element. That sort
of stage distance was just right
for it, Adelaide-Perth. What we
intended to do with the Caravelle
basically was to run the two aircraft
to and from Sydney to Perth via
Adelaide. Initially we would have
had just the two aeroplanes on that,
with a Viscount feeder service
from Melbourne to Adelaide.
Occasionally we could have run
the aircraft through Melbourne.
There was some argument about
Essendon’s suitability but we would
check that with the actual operating
behaviour of the aeroplane. It
wasn’t vital to the system. It
wasn’t just the engineering people,
my people who were keen on
the Caravelle, our pilots, our
management, everybody had gone
over and had a look at it and flown
in it, tried it out and everyone was
really enthusiastic about it.”
On July 5 1957 Warren
McDonald, chairman of the
Australian National Airlines
Commission (which traded as
Trans-Australia Airlines) discussed
with Sud Aviation an extension of
an option to purchase two Model
SE210 Caravelles for TAA for
delivery during May-June 1960.McDonald made three approaches
to the government to secure the
Caravelle purchase but all attempts
proved futile. The government
contended the domestic system was
not sufficiently robust to progress to
larger and faster turbine aircraft at
that stage.
Adding to TAA’s Caravelle
purchase woes was Ansett’s
intransigence. John Watkins
summarised the situation:
“As a matter of fact John Ryland
(TAA’s general manager) said to
me several times after that, that
was the most bitter disappointment
of his life. He never imagined that
that was going to be refused and
he was looking forward very much
to getting the Caravelle into TAA
service. But from the government’s
point of view it was just at the
time when the Two Airline Policy
was coming into effect, and using
hindsight one can understand that
they believed that unless both
operators could be induced to
introduce jets at the same time, that
sort of technological quantum leap
would put one airline at a grave
disadvantage in comparison with
the other. And this would upset
the whole philosophy of the Two
Airline stabilised industry.
“Ansett was not prepared to
switch in favour of the Caravelle,
we had a number of veryinteresting discussions with the
management and technical people
at Ansett, but we couldn’t convince
them that they’d be better off
going for Caravelles than Electras
and they couldn’t convince us
that we’d be better with Electras
than Caravelles. But in the upshot
the government decided that if
anybody was to get any aeroplanes
in that category, and they were of
a comparable category in terms
of passenger capacity and stage
capabilities, it would have to be
Lockheed Electras. So we had no
option but to go with the Electra.
“The Electra was a good
aeroplane with certain
qualifications. I don’t know whether
you say an aeroplane is a good
aeroplane when you have to send it
back to the manufacturer twice to
have its wings rebuilt. Well the first
problem was they started crashing
in America because the wing was
too elastic and they developed a
propeller whirl mode that shook the
wings off. That happened a couple
of times and the aeroplane was put
under very severe speed restrictions
until the problem was solved. And
we had to send all the fleet back to
Burbank. Lockheed picked up the
tab, they had to.”
In a last ditch stand, during May
1962 Sud Aviation SE210 Caravelle
F-BJAO Santa Maria visited
Melbourne on a demonstration
tour. This writer was on holidays
in Melbourne and visited Essendon
on May 4 that year to witness
the Ansett team conduct an
inspection of the aircraft prior to
a demonstration flight. It was a
charade as Ansett was not in the
least bit interested in a Caravelle
purchase.
The introduction of scheduled
domestic jet airline services in
Australia would be spearheaded
some years later by the Boeing 727
in November 1964 and Douglas
DC-9 in April 1967.No Australian airline would operate the
Caravelle, but Air Caledonie did operate the
type to Australia for many years.JULIAN GREEN