Time Capsule: Hijack in Alice Springs

November 15, 1972: Passengers held hostage in Australia's first plane hijack

November 15, 1972: Passengers held hostage in Australia's first plane hijack

Adelaide-based flight attendant Kaye McLachlan can clearly remember the telephone call. Another attendant was ill and could she join Ansett Airlines flight 232 to Alice Springs? That call turned out to be a fateful invitation to a shocking event in the nation’s aviation history.

The Fokker Friendship turboprop was full that day with 28 passengers and four crew, recalls McLachlan (then Goreham). “We were coming in to land in Alice Springs and it was shockingly bumpy. I was collecting last-minute cups from the cabin and my colleague, Gay, was making the pre-landing announcements. And then the hijacker came out of the toilet, holding a sawn-off rifle and a Bowie knife. He said to Gay: ‘This is a hijack.’

“He forced us both into the cockpit and pointed the gun inside. Luckily, we had an astute captain and he said: ‘We’re at a very critical stage of landing, I can’t talk to you now.’ It was lucky because we didn’t have enough fuel to go around again. We might never have landed. I said to the gunman: ‘We have to sit for landing’, so we sat on the galley floor, all three of us.”

The plane landed safely and taxied to an isolated part of the airport, where police began negotiating with the hijacker. “He said: ‘I don’t want money, does that surprise you?’” recalls McLachlan. “He told us over the four hours we were held captive that he wanted to commit suicide in a spectacular way. He intended to parachute out over the desert, and survive for as long as he could and then commit suicide.”

The heavily accented man turned out to be Miloslav Hrabinec, a Czech migrant who claimed he had lost his savings in a land scam in NSW. As heat in the aircraft cabin soared to the 40 degrees outside, Hrabinec demanded the use of a light aircraft, parachute and jumpsuit.

The passengers sat bemused until the captain and first officer negotiated their release. Then a Cessna light plane was taxied nearby, piloted by a veteran flying instructor, Ossie Watts. An undercover police officer, Paul Sandeman, accompanied Watts in the guise of his navigator.

“The hijacker made me jump out the back of the Fokker with him, and then he followed me across to the light aircraft,” says McLachlan. “He got suspicious seeing Paul and waved him out of the aircraft. Paul came up close and I was asked to search him. I felt a small gun in his pocket but I didn’t tell the hijacker that it was there.

“Then Paul lunged for the gun. I was standing next to him and the hijacker shot his gun and a bullet went through Paul’s hand. Then he pushed the gun into Paul’s stomach and pulled the trigger again. When Paul fell, his gun fell out and he reached for it and started running, weaving and ducking. I ran the other way, behind the light aircraft.”

Watts, who had been shown how to use a gun minutes earlier, began shooting. Police marksmen joined in, wounding Hrabinec in a hail of gunfire. He retreated to a ditch and fatally shot himself under the chin.

McLachlan had run back to the Fokker and shut the aircraft door, while a bleeding Sandeman sheltered underneath the plane.

McLachlan insists the trauma of being caught up in the hijack did not unduly affect her. “I’m an old-fashioned, sensible type, not the type to panic,” she says. “I kept flying for another couple of years and then I had a family. The hostess I replaced on that day wrote me a wonderful letter saying how sorry she was.”

The key players in the drama met periodically in subsequent months and years. “Paul got a Queen’s Commendation for Bravery for his actions, and we went to the ceremony,” she recalls. But he never recovered totally from his injuries.

Thirty-five years later, McLachlan still believes good fortune was on their side that day. “We were all very lucky – it could easily have gone wrong. I look down at the runway whenever I fly into Alice Springs and I feel like I’m part of the history of the town.”

Victoria Laurie