and c) They were fair!!
Sometimes they were far from fair.. A piece of corporate history for those with rose coloured glasses. This story is as accurate as I can remember it. In 1969 this scribe left the RAAF (sigh..) for the security of a job as an airways surveyor in DCA Head Office in Melbourne. Having been allotted a dark and dingy office with no window, my boss a former RAAF Hudson wartime pilot (Lloyd Milne no less,) told me to attend a conference between DCA officers and reps of the British BAC One-Eleven company in Australia to try and sell their product. The DC9 had recently been approved to operate into 30 metre (100 feet) wide runways in WA and NSW. To obtain that approval flight tests were needed to ensure that in event of engine failure at V1 the aircraft could maintain within six feet of the centreline until stopped or airborne. The BAC One-Eleven reps said they were happy their aircraft could meet the same requirements.
DCA officials, including my boss, had serious misgivings about allowing the British aircraft into Australia. It was a political thing, I think at the time.
So DCA told BAC they would allow sales to Australian operators but that the crosswind limit on the 100 ft wide runways would be restricted to something like 15 knots which was a piddling figure. As far as I recall there were no sums made - just someone's gut feeling.
I was told to draft the confirming letter to BAC which would be signed by Sir Donald Anderson after passing through the desks of numerous officials up to Alan Lum, the biggest wheel under Sir Don. I penned the first draft and after reading it, my boss told me to amend the crosswind limit to five knots if the runway was wet. I knew enough about jets to know that five knots limit on a wet runway was bull**** and I said so. Just do as you are instructed, said my boss Lloyd Milne.
Why this rubbish about crosswind limits said I? The One-Eleven can take 35 knots in England. My boss says you will soon learn the game of politics. It goes like this, he said. When the Poms get the letter limiting the One-Eleven to five knots on wet 100 ft wide runways, especially when wet runways were never discussed at the meeting, they will protest and say that is unfair. And that is true. We will get their reply but we will not reply back. Now there are millions of dollars of sales at stake here, and again they will come back urgently to us asking why five knots and again we won't reply.
With that, BAC will bypass us in DCA and go straight to the Minister for Air (Civil Aviation) and bitch that his DCA officials have put ridiculous cross-wind limit restrictions on the introduction of the BAC One-Eleven into airline service in Australia when similar restrictions are not applied to the current DC9 ops in WA.
In quick time the Minister will contact us and ask what the hell is going on with you people, and why the restrictions on the One-Eleven? We reply it is a safety matter since 100 ft wide runways leave no room for error should an engine fail on take off. When hearing the magic word "Safety" the Minister is supposed to fold under. BUT, we tell the Minister, if money is available from Federal or State authorities to enable DCA to widen the runways where the One-Elevens will operate in competition to the F28 and DC9, the safety problem is overcome and we (DCA) can approve the introduction of the BAC One-Eleven. In other words DCA will screw BAC in order to get funding for wider runways in NSW and WA.
History reveals the BAC One Eleven was never ordered by Australian airlines. However, Sir Robert Menzies who was Prime Minister in that era, directed the RAAF to buy two BAC One-Elevens for the RAAF No 34 (VIP) Squadron use. These arrived in 1967 and both aircraft gave sterling service. The above tale is a generalised account of events as I remember them. But the dirty tricks did originate from DCA and in my view was unfair to BAC.