Teal Makes History
p. 59 · Read in the full issue
Lucky
Mishap
Teal Makes History And a Rescue
[T is not often that travellers benefit through a transport breakdown—but that was the ;ase early December when TEAL’S ?oral Route Solent flying-boat, vest-bound from Papeete to Suva, uffered a propeller mishap to one mgine.
Aboard the aircraft were 35 >assengers bound for the US, 11 for Jew Zealand, and five for Apia. As in spare propeller was held at ututaki, it appeared certain that he through passengers would miss heir air connections at Nadi.
As soon as word was received in Auckland, TEAL’s Head Office went nto action, and within five hours if the mishap a DC6, with spare iropeller, three engineers, a spare ir crew, and equipment for re uelling the DC6, was airborne from Vhenuapai direct for Aitutaki.
That was at 8 p.m., on December The 1983-mile flight was esti nated to take eight hours but con litions were favourable and the light was completed in 6 hours 50 amutes.
Engineers and spare propeller were anded, the aircraft refuelled, the
passengers taken aboard, and the UC6 was in the air again within four hours to deliver the US-bound passengers at Nadi two bout's earlier than would have been the case if the journey had been completed normally by flying-boat.
The New Zealand-bound passeng ers were landed in Auckland 18 hours ahead of schedule. Only the five passengers bound for Samoa were delayed. They remained at Aitutaki to go on with the Solent.
The DC6 was airborn for 18 of the 24 hours that the entire opera tion took to complete. A round-trip distance of 4,800 miles was involved.
The mishap coincided with un favourable NZ press publicity given to sharp criticism of TEAL’s trans- Tasman operations made by the well-known author Nevil Shute, who had suffered some hold-ups in a, flight from Nadi to Australia via New Zealand.
This, combined with the fact that one of the passengers in the Solent was the French film star, Martine Carol may have influenced TEAL to carry out this financially un profitable but highly efficient rescue operation.
History was made on the flight in that this was the first occasion that a TEAL DC6 had landed at Aitutaki. This was also probably the largest civil airliner to use Aitutaki, but it is believed that a larger American military aircraft landed there about five years ago.