On 22 September 1966 a Vickers Viscount departed from Mount Isa, Queensland, Australia for a 73-minute flight to Longreach. Forty-four minutes after takeoff a fire started in one of the engines. The crew were unable to extinguish the fire or feather the propeller so made an emergency descent with the intention of landing at Winton, a small town along the route. The fire spread to the fuel tank and weakened the wing structure so that a large part of the left wing broke away and the aircraft crashed. All twenty-four occupants were killed. The accident remains the fifth-worst in Australia's civil aviation history.
The flight
Ansett-ANA Flight 149, a Vickers Viscount registered VH-RMI, took off from Mount Isa at 12:08 pm Eastern Standard Time and climbed to an altitude of 17,500 feet (5 334 m) for the flight of 316 nautical miles (585 km) to Longreach. On board were two pilots, two air hostesses and twenty passengers.
At 12:52 pm the Flight Service Unit at Longreach heard a radio transmission from the crew of Flight 149 saying they were making an emergency descent. Two minutes later the crew notified Longreach they had a fire warning for number 2 engine and had been unable to feather the propeller. At 12:59 pm Longreach received a message from Flight 149, relayed by the crew of a Douglas DC-3, saying fire in the engine nacelle was visible to the crew, and they were diverting to land at Winton airport, 92 nautical miles (171 km) from Longreach.
At 1:03 pm when only 13.5 nautical miles (25 km) from the airport VH-RMI crashed on Nadjayamba Station and was engulfed in flames.
Crash scene
Clouds of black smoke were observed by several people on agricultural properties to the west of Winton. One was a station hand working on the tower of a windmill. He was aware of the noise of an aircraft in the distance. The noise suddenly stopped so he looked up and saw a cloud of black smoke in the sky. Two burning objects were falling from the smoke towards the ground. When one of the falling objects struck the ground he saw a bright flash followed by a rising column of black smoke. A number of people in Winton observed the cloud of black smoke in the air to the west of the town, followed by two columns of dense black smoke rising from ground level.
The main wreckage consisting of the forward fuselage, right wing, inner part of the left wing and number 2, 3 and 4 engines was badly burned. A short distance away were the tail and rear fuselage aft of the rear cabin door, both unburned and with little damage. Scattered about were bodies, passenger seats, pieces of cabin flooring, and sections of fuselage structure, some with cabin windows and cabin lining. The bodies of eleven of the passengers were unburned and still strapped to their seats. The bodies of the two air hostesses and three other passengers were found free of their seats. The bodies of six passengers and the two pilots were incinerated in the main wreckage. The outer part of the left wing and number 1 engine were about 900 yards (820 m) away from the main wreckage.
Investigation
On the morning after the crash a team of 22 members of the Department of Civil Aviation reached Winton to investigate the accident. The crash site on Nadjayamba Station was flat and dry, with only a few trees. Investigation was difficult because most of the aircraft was destroyed in the impact and subsequent fire. After two weeks of investigation at the crash site, most of the wreckage was catalogued and secured in crates. The crates were transported to Melbourne, where an empty wool store was hired for the purpose of laying out all items of wreckage in their original position in the aircraft.
The aircraft was equipped with an early-model flight data recorder, so this was the first accident investigation in Australia to be aided by information from such a recorder. Housed in the forward belly locker, the recorder was damaged in the crash and subsequent fire, but it provided sufficient information to allow reconstruction of the aircraft's flight path until the moment of impact. The aircraft was not equipped with a cockpit voice recorder.