I always thought that the Company's decision to wet lease was in response to commercial demand. Significant additional flying was scheduled with our own resources but that was insufficient to cope.

Accommodation in Sydney was also extraordinarily tight. Aer Lingus crews slipped at a funny little motel just off Oxford Street but the Martinair crews were accommodated at the Parramatta Parkroyal. I shudder to think what the crews thought but I guess they were happy to be out of the northern winter. I can't remember where TowerAir crew slipped in Melbourne - I think it was a case of 'out of sight, out of mind'.

There was a mild kerfuffle in the middle of the TowerAir lease as the initial aircraft required a check. Their maintenance base was in New York but the aircraft were operated during the lease between MEL and LAX. The two-man band responsible for negotiating the lease was somewhat embarrassed and almost in denial mode when confronted with the awful facts!

Thanks Fris for the photos. I wonder how many 'task forces' Qantas would set up today if similar circumstances prevailed?

Probably right.

What I was getting at was, yes, there was increased demand but the fact Qantas couldn't meet it immediately prompted a warning/threat from the government that if it couldn't, it would look at awarding traffic rights to more overseas airlines.

Qantas' response was to get hold of any capacity they could which I think is the real reason they 'settled' for Tower Air, not much else available due to the increased demand.

I remember there were Sales people from MEL on the Tower 747 to act as a 'Qantas Representative' on board.

Yes, if it happened today I'm sure the precursor to the response would be layered with much 'reaching out', 'resetting expectations', 'scoping the whole thing and... "What that looks like"' and a dictionary of other weasel words that ultimately result in no decision then a plan for the poor lower down persons who will be blamed... that's certainly how the opposition do it.

I think the Tower Crew might have stayed at the Old Melbourne from memory.

PH MCF was the aircraft PER ground crew used to set a record for Guiness book pulling a/c along tarmac behind bays 56-53 at ITB from memory 59 staff

Getting (briefly) back on topic......

Has anybody heard definitively what happened to OQG?

At that time, Singapore Airlines was engaged in extremely heavy lobbying of the Australian Government to get more access/frequency to Australian ports and Qantas was strenuously opposing this. The SQ argument was that there was much more demand than available seats in/out of Australia so the Government told QF to put on more capacity otherwise they would grant SQ the increased access. Despite the belief in QF management that the high demand that SQ was quoting was artificially generated, the aircraft discussed in the previous posts were sourced and a significant capacity increase was generated. The capacity ended up being far more than the genuine damand and the Martinair Aircraft did very little flying as it wasn't really required.

Qantas didn't want to order any more of its own high capacity aircraft for the short term as they wanted to wait for B747-400 deliveries to start late 1989. The B744 was a significantly more efficient aircraft so the short term leases of EEI, Tower Air & Martinair filled the capacity gap.

I believe that most of the Tower Air flights operated via Papeete.

Now, can anyone tell us what happened to the A380 engine?

Back off topic for a minute.

I just remembered that there was another odd aeroplane around that time. Qantas sold B747-238B VH-EBG to El Al in May 88 but it came back into the Qantas fleet on lease in Sept 88. The lower lobe galley had been ripped out and the cabin was reconfigured so it wasn't the EBG we knew. Many manuals had to be rewritten and the aeroplane was generally more trouble than it was worth. It went back to El Al in June 89.

Wasn't it also substantially heavier too... I seem to recall EBA and/or EBB coming back as well from a stint at Air Lanka and had to be put through a D check because maintenance records weren't kept up to date by Air Lanka, so I was told.

A small point, was there evidence that the LLG had been 'ripped out' or was it perhaps just 'removed' (sorry, just being a smart alec).

My apologies Ken, you are right, she was a 100 series.EEI was correct. Or known as EIEIO, she she left EBB ( Buckets Of Bolts) as the usual disaster, for dead.

EBG, was an interesting aircraft. It had a very distinctive tearing noise on the flight deck, each take off. Needless to say, many crews found it quite disconcerting, and repeatedly entered it in the Tech Logs. So they decided to pull her off line, and bascially gave her a phase check, even though she was not due, and pulled the flight deck apart, x rayed all parts, and found nothing. So they put her back together and back on line she went, only to continue the unusual noise, and the complaint in the logs continued. Probably still doing it, in some African country, where she does the milk run.

Probably one of those mysteries that were never solved... wasn't there an anomaly within the 747-338 fleet that one or two of the airframes burned more fuel and no one could ever determine why... or was that solved at some stage???

Ida

That tearing noise must have been most disconcerting. Sadly the old girl emitted real tearing noises one last time in August 2007 when she was broken up.

Folks,
That was not a lease-back, that was a sale returned because of non-conformance with the sales contract ---- and that is a really fascinating story, but that is for another time.
Re. the Martinair B747, it was a brand new aircraft, painted in the hybrid QF colours by Boeing, and delivered from Seattle to Sydney, without going anywhere near Holland until the end of the lease.
Tootle pip!!

Oh come on do tell

LS

That's interesting about EBG. They must have sorted it out eventually as it was still delivered to El Al after its brief return to QF. I believe the aeroplane ended her days with El Al. I too would love to hear the full story.

The Martinair B747 certainly looked brand spanking. Incidentally, it seems there was a second lease to QF from 02OCT89 to 20APR90. I don't remember that one.

Rgds