Shadow over Qantas safety record?

YELLOWING files in the bowels of the Supreme Court have re vealed what the waters off Papua New Guinea have long kept secret a possible blemish on Qantas’ safety record.

On July 16, 1951, a Qantas Dehavilland DHA3 Drover, registration number VH-EBQ crashed into the sea near Lae on PNG’s north-central coast.

The pilot and all six passengers were killed.

According to a Qantas spokesman, the airline’s “perfect” safety record relates to the jet age, from about 1958 on. Even so, the crash of VH-EBQ is among the records of PNG’s Supreme Court, then the supreme court of the territory of Papua and New Guinea, before PNG gained independence in 1975.

The body of one of the passengers, Frances Daisy Tindall, was never re covered from the crash. A little over a year later, on August 8, 1952, Supreme Court Judge Justice Ralph Gore granted a motion declaring her dead so her estate could be wound up.

According to affidavits relied on by the Judge, VH-EBQ was scheduled to fly from Wau to Lae via Bulolo. (Bulolo and Wau were gold towns).

The pilot was John William Spiers, and Frances Tindall’s fellow passengers included the Right Reverend Stephen Appelhaus and Helen Jean Connor.

The plane left Wau in the morning and arrived at Bulolo, about 20 kilo metres further north, where it picked up another passenger, Kenneth Charles Macdonald, and departed for Lae, about 75 km to the north-north-east.

According to Qantas records, VH EBQ went down about 6.4 km south of the Markham River and about 1.6 km offshore in the waters of the Huon Gulf.

The cause of the crash was recorded as being a “loss of control resulting from structural failure of the central propeller

during flight”.

Qantas records reveal little else about

VH-EBQ. Qantas bought the single

propeller DHA3 Drover on September 13, 1950, and operated it until July 16, 1951.

Frances Tindall was employed by Qantas Empire Airways Ltd as a clerk on 10 pounds per week at the airline’s Lae office. She came from Binnia Street, Coolah, a small town about 80 km north

west of Coonabarabran in central north New South Wales.

She was a dutiful daughter, according to her father Herbert Tindall, who was informed of the crash that day by the local police sergeant, William Howie Woods.

“Frances had kept regular contact with me and I regularly received letters from her,” he said in his alfadavit.

“Occasionally, Frances forwarded a small sum of money for the use of her mother. The letters ceased in Lily, 1951.” □