Long before Captain Chesley Sullenberger became famous for ditching a plane into New York’s Hudson River, all 25 people on board were saved when a pilot was forced to ditch a DC-3 aircraft into Botany Bay after encountering problems just seconds after taking off from Sydney Airport
The pilot, now retired in South Australia, Captain Rod Lovell, has released a book detailing the truth behind the ditching and blowing the whistle on his treatment by the authorities which crushed him financially and destroyed his professional flying career.
The controversial story highlights 25 years of frustration and persecution.
On April 24, 1994, an aircraft carrying school students from Sydney’s Scots College bound for Lord Howe and Norfolk Islands plunged into Botany Bay just seconds after take-off when one of the engines on the plane failed.
Captain Lovell was forced to make a split-second decision and called on his training and experience to ditch the plane (make a water landing) in Botany Bay.
Incredibly, everyone aboard the DC-3 survived, but the plane was engulfed in water within minutes.
Despite his heroics Rod had his licence suspended, losing his earning ability and suffered years of battling to fight the system and prove that the aircraft itself was a safety risk.
The very authorities who investigated the crash and suspended his licence were the same or linked to those also responsible for giving the all clear for the aircraft he was piloting to be in the air.
Rod was hailed as a hero at the time – still is by the passengers and crew and all who know him – but the aviation accident authority chose to vilify him and quickly close the case, instead of conducting an in-depth professional investigation.
“Everyone’s heard of Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger and the Miracle on the Hudson, but some people don’t know that almost the same thing happened to me 15 years earlier,” Captain Lovell said.
“And while he (Sully) has been hailed as a hero, had a movie made about him and has done speaking tours about his life, I was vilified and turned into a scapegoat.”
“This book is my way of reclaiming the narrative, of telling the truth about what really happened.”
Captain Lovell said there were other plane crashes in Australia around the time of his forced ditching and believes there was pressure on the aviation industry to act.
“I was suspended three months after the crash, which doesn’t make sense to me.”
“If they thought I was a danger and unable to do the job, why didn’t they suspend me right away? They just wanted a scapegoat.”
Rod says in 2018, he was able to prove conclusively the plane was at fault and it wasn’t pilot error.
“I was invited to the Netherlands to fly the only certified DC-3 simulator in the world.”
“We loaded the alleged conditions into the simulator computer, and we flew the simulator exactly the same as in 1994 and on one engine – the simulator climbed out as expected.”
“This exercise was repeated until we recreated the flight into Botany Bay and this was only achieved when the right engine power in the simulator was reduced about 30 per cent from maximum, proving my conclusion that my DC-3 was not producing the power and it had nothing to do with the allegation of above maximum take-off weight.”
“At the end of the day I effectively became the sacrificial lamb in a government cover-up to ensure blame was deflected away from those actually responsible for the safety of the airline passengers.”
“It has been a long and frustrating journey, but I just want to set the record straight.”
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