From the Archives, 1971: Qantas pays $500,000 ransom in mid-air bomb hoax

First published in The Age on May 27, 1971

$500,000 RANSOM ON JET

Qantas pays in mid-air bomb hoax

Qantas last night paid $500,000 ransom to a man who threatened to blow up a Hong Kong-bound airliner with 128 people on board.

Qantas general manager (Captain R. J. Ritchie) handed over the $500,000 in two suitcases outside Qantas House in the heart of Sydney at 5.45 p.m.

Police throughout Australia are hunting for a man who called himself “Mr. Brown” when he staged the gigantic bomb hoax against Australia’s overseas airline.

In the elaborately panned plot, “Mr. Brown” threatened to blow up Qantas Boeing 707 jetliner City of Broken Hill if he was not paid the huge ransom.

Earlier, he directed police to a real bomb at Sydney Airport.

For almost six hours yesterday afternoon, the crew of 12 on bard Qantas flight 755 frantically searched for a bomb.

Most of that time the jet, with 116 passengers, circled Sydney.

Sydney police last night found the yellow rented Hertz Volkswagen van, used to pick up the money, about half-a-mile from Qantas House.

The slightly built man who drove the van was in his late twenties. He had long brown hair, horn-rimmed spectacles and a false beard.

It is not known if the driver is the “Mr. Brown” who wrote the ransom notes and telephoned Qantas officials with directions on how the ransom was to be paid.

“We were literally in the ransom gang’s hands,” a Qantas spokesperson said last night.

Soon after the cash was handed over, a man telephoned Captain Ritchie to say there was no bomb on the plane.

The plane landed safely about one hour after the cash was handed over.

The drama began at noon yesterday with a telephone call to the Department of Civil Aviation in Sydney.

A man said a bomb had been planted in a locker at the international terminal at Sydney airport.

Commonwealth police raced to the locker and found a gelignite bomb with a barometric ticker system designed to detonate the bomb at 20,000 feet altitude.

With the bomb were three notes: one for Captain Ritchie, one for Commonwealth Police, and one explaining how the bomb worked.

The note to Capt. Ritchie said that a similar device was on board Qantas flight 755 bound for London by way of Hong Kong.

The note said information on the location of the bomb would be given on the payment of $500,000.

The jet already was on its way to Hong Kong.

Qantas alerted the 707 captain (Capt. W. G. Selwyn) immediately.

The jet, flying over the outback in the north-west of NSW, was told to fly to Brisbane.

At Brisbane airport, full emergency procedures were adopted for the plane’s arrival.

But Qantas considered Sydney’s emergency facilities were superior to Brisbane and decided to bring the plane back to Sydney.

Authorities immediately swung into action in an all-out bid to protect the passengers and crew.

Eight navy ships sped to Botany Bay near the airport and airport crash facilities were bolstered by 17 ambulances and 12 fire brigades.

Qantas established a direct radio link with the plane while working desperately to raise the $500,000 ransom money.

In mid-air, as hours ticked by and fuel supplies dwindled, the plane’s crew searched frantically for the bomb.

The plane could not land because the ransom gang’s warning that the bomb would explode if the plane dropped below 20,000 ft.

Qantas officials had to rely on a frail telephone link with “Mr. Brown” throughout the afternoon.

With only an hour of fuel left in the plane, the hoaxers set the handover terms for the money.

At 5.45 the Qantas general manager, alone and unescorted, waited with two innocuous blue suitcases at the entrance of the Qantas building in Elizabeth Street.

Capt. Ritchie loaded the two suitcases and the $500,000 in a yellow Hertz hire van which pulled in at the kerb.

He waved keys

The driver waved a bunch of keys in a prearranged identification signal and Captain Ritchie loaded the money in through the van’s side door.

Half an hour later, at 6.10, Qantas received “Mr. Brown’s” final call, made to tell them there was no bomb on board the plane.

The plane touched down safely at 6.45 p.m. to a massive greeting by pressmen and onlookers.

The two key Qantas figures in the drama were Captain Ritchie and his deputy general manager (Captain P. W. Howson).

Captain Ritchie was not at Qantas when the first “Brown” call came and Captain Howson stepped in and represented himself as Captain Ritchie on the telephone.

Captain Howson took the four calls which led to the rendezvous and ransom handover.

A dozen Qantas senior executives worked frantically to get the cash ready.

“We had to treat it as a serious matter – proceed on the assumption that the threat was real. We thought it might have been a hoax, but we were not prepared to take the risk,” a spokesman said.

The Qantas executives wrote a cheque for $500,000 on the Reserve Bank and picked the money up in the two blue suitcases.

The few senior executives “in the know” watched helplessly as Captain Ritchie handed over the money over.

The ransomers had warned that the plane would be left to explode if any of their detailed plans were not followed to the letter.

The Qantas spokesman said: “Despite our close cooperation with the DCA, State and Commonwealth police, no one in the building’s foyer knew what was going on during the handover.”

Captain Ritchie was instructed to hand the money over alone and was told that a follow-up car would watch his every movement.

If there was any move by police, the plane would be left to blow up.

The spokesman described the ransom as “brilliantly conceived, and cleverly executed.”

On August 4, 1971, Peter Macari (Mr. Brown) and Raymond Poynting were arrested for their role in the hoax. After eventually pleading guilty, Poynting was sentenced to seven years in prison, while Macari was handed the maximum 15-year sentence. Only part of the ransom money was recovered.