Two Hamilton firms become one

New Zealand Aerospace Industries was born at Hamilton on 1 March 1973 out of two local businesses. Aero Engine Services Ltd, a maintenance firm, had bought the rights to the Australian Victa Airtourer light aircraft and built 80 of them; Air Parts (NZ) Ltd had moved from assembling American Fletcher FU-24 topdressers from kits to building its own improved versions. Together they gave New Zealand a real aircraft industry, with farm aircraft for the country’s hillsides and a fully aerobatic military trainer.

The Airtrainer and the Rhodesian order

That trainer was the CT/4 Airtrainer, designed by AESL’s P. W. C. Monk from the stronger four-seat Victa Aircruiser. It first flew on 23 February 1972, and production started against 24 for the Royal Thai Air Force; the Royal Australian Air Force and Royal New Zealand Air Force followed. Then came the order that nearly broke the firm. Fourteen CT/4Bs ordered for a Swiss flying club by Breco Trading turned out to be a sanctions-busting front for the Rhodesian Air Force. The New Zealand government embargoed them, and they sat in storage for six years before going to Australia.

Into Pacific Aerospace

The financial damage forced a restructuring, and in 1982 the company re-emerged as Pacific Aerospace Corporation. The work it had begun lived on: Pacific Aerospace took over NZAI’s project for a Fletcher replacement, which became the turboprop Cresco, and kept the CT/4 in low-rate production for decades, the 155th and last airframe being a demonstrator built in 2007. The Fletcher line, 297 aircraft in all, still flies on New Zealand farms.

Factories

• Hamilton works · Hamilton Airport, Waikato

People

• P. W. C. Monk · AESL chief designer — Designed the CT/4 Airtrainer

Records and firsts

• CT/4 Airtrainer chosen as primary trainer by the RAAF, RNZAF and Royal Thai Air Force