Thought that I’d share a few pics of this old bird for your indulgence.
She was built as a C-47B in 1945 and served briefly with the USAF before a long career with the RAAF – until circa 1989 when she entered the civil register.
The currently registered VH-OVM is based in Melbourne, where she conducts twilight cocktail fights over the city and spectacular Port Phillip Heads. She also takes regular charters to Victorian regional wineries and King Island for a feed of fine cheeses and lobster. What a way to go.
The aircraft is pictured at Warrnambool airfield in the southwest of Victoria, where the humour is dry, the climate is drier, but life is sweet. The occasion is the Warrnambool races. OVM has become part of the local racing scene as an accountancy firm has chartered the aircraft annually to bring down employees from Melbourne for a punt on the nags.
How long this will continue is anyone’s guess. The starboard engine sounded very rough on start-up. There are signs of corrosion in the outer wing panels. Rumour has it that the aircraft is for sale. And with the ever present threat of exorbitant insurance fees, I wonder how long historic aircraft like OVM will continue in any kind of commercial service.
There is nothing like the sound of a pair of nicely tuned radials as they contentedly rumble away into the dusk.
By: mark_pilkington - 22nd November 2009 at 04:03
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It is difficult to keep any large aircraft in commercial charter service, you need to keep up the volume of customers/seats which in regards to a DC-3 requires finding 28 people willing to travel to the same place at the same time, easier to do if you have a single booking by a group or a club, but not so easy if your selling individual seats.
There are 47 complete DC-3 / C-47s surviving in Australia, (the vast majority being converted wartime C-47s with Pratt & Whitney twin row wasps -1830’s and some still configured with the military cargo doors, one original civil built DC-3 with Wright Cyclones – single row 1820’s, remains flying while 2 others survive as static airframes).
There are notionally a total of 14 DC-3’s capable of flying or under restoration to fly in Australia.
http://www.adastron.com/dc-3/ozcensus.htm
There are six DC-3’s sitting stored at Bankstown NSW, and awaiting auction after the collapse of Discovery Air Tours, (Dakota National Air) while the former NZ DC-3 that was being operated by Classic Wings in 2008 in Western Australia (Tourist airline not the magazine) is now stored in NSW owned by its Bank.
While in Victoria VH-OVM is operated by Shortstop Jet Charter and VH-TMQ is operated by Ausjet as Gooneybird, both are struggling to fill seats in charters, hopefully both will survive to entertain and service us for many more years but it is clearly a difficult business to run, and run for love rather than pure profit!
TMQ is operating to Temora on the weekend of 28 and 29th of November, on same day flights, at a cost of $949 per person, or discount for group bookings.
While $949 per person might at first seem rather expensive, (and would be beyond many peoples pockets in todays financial climate) I imagine it allows the flight to proceed at a break even point well below full capacity of 28 passengers. (The flight is advertised subject to a minium pax requirement)
Of course the $949 per seat not only has to fund the fuel and oil for the flight, and the salaries of the 2 or 3 person crew (often a engineer is carried to deal with any away from home issues), but also the scheduled maintenance and operating overheads and return on the investment incurred even when the aircraft is not operating, all pro-rated across the flying hours.
Temora is @500km or 2 hours flying time to Melbourne, and so the flight would need to fund at least the operating costs for 4 hours flying time.
Melbourne also has two heritage DC-3’s one of the first pre-war ANA DC-3’s VH-ABR and the first TAA DC-3 VH-AES, these aircraft are operated by volunteers, and cannot operate with paying passengers, and I know one has about 2000 manhours of maintenance performed per annum, but achieves only about 50 flying hours a year, so the pressure would be on commercial charter operators to maximise the paid flying hours to amortise maintenance costs such as those across as many paying passengers as possible.
A recent 1934 Air race reinactment with one of those aircraft consumed over $3500 just in fuel for a 3.5 hour flight time to give a feel of the costs that will be incurred for that Temora flight, and that was with volunteer crew and no shareholder profit or recovery of investment or annual maintenance overheads.
Were I not busy for the weekend I would seriously consider taking a seat on TMQ to go and see Temora, and will aim to be on it in the new year, as we need to support these operators if we want to be able to see DC-3’s in our skies, and certainly if we want to be able to ride on and experience real prop driven airliners of the past.
Regards
Mark Pilkington
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November 22, 2009 at 1:35 am