3. Epilogue ____ (about 10 mins read)

A Chapter by Carola

the afterword plus photo.

3. Epilogue

-- Early Monday morning I flew from Bankstown to Essendon which takes about 1:40 hrs/mins, 'cos our plane was due for it's regular maintenance called '100 hourly'. Once the aircraft had been pushed into the hangar and the doors were closed, the engineers informed me the leasing company was repossessing the aircraft for non-payment of their lease and waved me goodbye. So that was the end of my corporate flying job!

I flew home by airliner and went to the company’s North Sydney office the next day to collect my pay. I had worked for the company for 1 year and 7 months, from 28 June 1979 until my last flight on the 2nd Feb. 1981.

The flying was interesting even though Garry’s frequent last minute changes of mind could be quite taxing, I would rate corporate flying to a bit like being a taxi driver. I digress from my Pacific memoir to relate these couple of anecdotes over the next few paragraphs, as the life of a corporate pilot.

1. There were many times within a couple of minutes after take-off Garry would want to point out some particular ground feature to his mates, maybe a shopping centre he had built, or show off his boat (in Cairns) or change his mind and want to fly some particular low-level scenic route (eg. flying past the Williamtown RAAF Airbase at 500ft just off the coast) or whatever. This required deviating from my flight plan and if this was out of a major city airport it required a change in *ATC clearance (*Air Traffic Control).

Deviating within minutes of take-off because your boss has had a change of mind I found rather vexing. As if ATC aren’t busy enough with routing airliners through the sky without a last minute clearance change request from some low-priority private flight. Deviating from your flight plan itself is not a problem as things can happen inflight, such as weather, fuel, passenger gets sick, or whatever, but in our circumstances I found it irritating.

However these last minute low level flying requests, with their accompanying higher fuel consumption could be quite exasperating in managing my planned flight fuel. To save fuel I would reduce power to slow down, but if wily old Garry who always sat towards the back of the plane, should happen to notice this, would shout out “Speed Up” again.

I had no intention of complying with the latest quirky request and its consequential increase in fuel consumption, but instead I dropped down about another 50-100ft giving him the illusion we had increased speed again.

2. In late spring to early summer, one of our regular runs was from Sydney to Cairns where Garry had stationed his boat for the Marlin fishing season. Our plane was usually full with Garry’s entourage who would spend either a weekend or several days with him on his boat.
I always stayed in a motel back in Cairns and enjoyed doing touristy things. I particularly enjoyed a train ride to Kuranda up in the Atherton Tablelands where they had great arts and craft markets and I'm sure nowadays there would be heaps of other things to see or do as well.

Since the 1980s most of Cairns’s accommodation has been totally replaced with newer style buildings for the growing overseas tourist market. So nowadays it is highly unlikely you’ll get nightly visitations from those giant cockroaches who used to leisurely saunter back and forth from the garden into your motel room via the large gap under your room’s entrance door! That was the only negative I experienced in Cairns back then. I have not been back to Cairns since my flying days, so even with the newer architecture, I will probably always associate Cairns with cockroaches.

On the return flight from Cairns to Sydney I remember having a heated discussion with Garry on the tarmac at night after my diversion to land at Tamworth Airport (TMW). Flying southbound from Cairns we sometimes experienced stronger winds en route than forecast. Occasionally I needed to make an extra fuel stop to ensure I wasn’t cutting into the Sydney *holding fuel or reserves. Garry, a non-pilot, kept telling me that I didn’t need extra fuel. Huh, Oh really!? I couldn’t figure out from where he got this idea.…(*holding fuel is for flying in a circuit pattern whilst waiting for your landing slot, it’s an ATC requirement for the peak traffic period of that airport).
About a week later I had the answer, the leasing company’s sales people had quoted him MU-2 range distances that were based on full tanks and no passengers, just the pilot! That figures…. Typical salesman.

(Excluding many puddle-jumper aircraft, there is a trade-off between having full fuel tanks and the number of passengers you can carry without being overweight. So your range distance, apart from the wind influence, also depends whether you’re carrying a full load of passengers and so less fuel).

I can’t say the MU-2 ending came as a total surprise. Whenever the fuel man at Bankstown airport saw me, he kept asking me “when is the boss going to pay the fuel account.”

Because our carnet card (a fuel credit card) was no longer being accepted, Garry's company then had given me a cash float of $600 to pay for fuel and also keep the bar stocked up with drinks. As Garry did not drink coffee, tea or alcohol, I made sure there was plenty of his favourite Coca Cola. The bar was also stocked with tonic water, lemonade, can’t remember if we carried alcohol for the passengers or they brought their own, and there was also coffee and tea, etc. that I kept in the cupboard under the urn. The remainder of the cash float was to pay for any other incidentals, such as sandwich trays for passengers on board (and my subsequent airline flight back home to Sydney).

With our previous aircraft, the Aerostar, the last maintenance bill was unpaid during the change-over to the MU-2, so Aviation Centre our maintenance company then, would not release our Aerostar from their Bankstown hangar. In hindsight, a predicted forewarning. ….Garry did not like paying his accounts! Every week or fortnight, I can’t remember which it was, I too had to ask for my pay, it was never automatic.

-- I did fly VH-SMZ again several times later with other general aviation companies whilst working as a casual charter pilot.

-- After the demise of my corporate job, I flew one more flight over the Pacific in 1981 in the MU-2B-40 ‘Solitaire’ (the short model MU-2) for Interair Pty. Ltd. with the manager and another salesman on board. This was an MU-2 demonstration and sales tour to Nouméa, New Caledonia and my first experience at hearing ATC speak English with a French accent. Then our tour proceeded via Norfolk Island onto New Zealand landing at Auckland, Taupo, Ohakea, Wellington, Christchurch, Paraparaumu, and back to Auckland. Then returning to Essendon, Australia via Lord Howe Island, a total distance of 5089 nm (9424 km) a much longer distance than the Honolulu flight. The demo tour was for 9 days. Interair P/L were based at Essendon airport, it was the first company I flew for after the VH-SMZ repossession and I flew with them for a while, commuting from NSW to Victoria every week.

-- Incidentally, some months after the MU-2s repossession, Garry Dent’s company leased a Learjet, that too was repossessed for non-payment. History repeating itself.

-- While researching what happened our MU-2, VH-SMZ, I found an interesting link, the www.airhistory.net website and looking at several photos I noticed the aircraft had been repainted sometime between March and August 1986. And in January 1992, VH-SMZ was sold in the US as N31480, so the aircraft was in Australia only for about 11 years 7 months.

▪️ Garry as a person could be quite mercurial and cantankerous at times shouting at his business colleagues as well as staff, when he was obviously frustrated by some matter that wasn’t going quite as he had expected.

However I learned a lot from him.

For instance his attitude to problems. He did not want me to tell him of any problems, only give him the solutions to a current problem. That was opposite to how I was raised by my parents. Such a positive attitude I found amazing and totally changed my way of thinking.

Also how he can quickly assesses the viability of a business. He often expected me to attend lunch when he had business colleagues with him, cos he liked to introduce me as his pilot (intimating his business could afford a plane and pilot !) ...…. During lunch at a restaurant one time he was observing an ice-cream parlour business opposite and announced it was going to go broke soon. He explained that, during the busy lunch hour period there were insufficient customers walking in and out of the door buying ice-creams for the business to last the distance. He was right, next time we were at that restaurant again the ice-cream parlour was gone.

I also appreciated the opportunity he gave me by employing me, a female, as his corporate pilot.
Quite an avant-garde attitude to employment in the 1980s corporate world. In those times female pilots were refused employment by the airlines. It was only after the Australian government changed the laws regarding discrimination, that one female took an airline to court and won, so opening up the airline gate to women pilots.

Note Added 23 Feb 2023 :-

Many people may not know that during World War 2 there was a shortage of pilots. So women pilots in the UK and USA were used to fly the newly built military aircraft from the factories the long distances to the various military bases in the UK and USA. The women were also used to pilot air ambulances.

The women were trained to fly numerous WW2 aircraft types of fighters, bombers and reconnaissance planes. Some were also shot down by the enemy.

Using the women pilots for ferrying, then released the male pilots to fly in the war missions. The women weren't only English & American but also came from other countries such as Australia and Poland.

Some men with physical disabilities and so were unsuitable to fly in combat, were also trained alongside the women to become ferry pilots.

So women pilots are not a new thing of the latter 1900s!

Books have been written about these women pilots.

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© 2024 Carola

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Coyote Poetry

Thank you Carola for sharing the story. I liked how you described the basic things. Extra money for drinks and gas. I enjoyed the story. I wanted to learn to fly. I have no night vision. Thank you for sharing the amazing chapter.
Coyote