High-flying Hazelton hails Rex resurgence

Words: Damon Kitney

With the little airline he started in a paddock now taking on the likes of Qantas and Virgin, Max Hazelton sees good days ahead for Australian aviation.

OF ALL the aircraft Max Hazelton has flown on over his 95 years, the Regional Express flight from Orange to Sydney on the afternoon of February 28 was extra special. At his side was his only son Graham, better known by his nickname Toby, who often calls his dad “boss”.

The next morning, as the clock at Sydney Airport ticked over to 8.25am, they stood together at the arrival gate to greet Rex’s inaugural 737 jet service from Melbourne. The carrier was formed two decades ago from the merger of Kendell Airlines and the regional carrier Max Hazelton and his brother Jim started in 1953 called Hazelton Airlines.

“It was very hard not to have wet eyes because it was such a big day. They were looking after me extremely well with a wheelchair. It was an amazing day,’’ says Max, his now permanently bloodshot eyes again turning misty for a moment behind his spectacles.

The jet was flown by captains John Veitch and Brett Brown, both ex-Hazelton pilots who took voluntary redundancies from Virgin Australia last year.

“They came home again,” Max says with a beaming smile. “(Rex deputy chairman and former federal transport minister) John Sharp has been a magnificent person promoting things.”

After decades of competing headon with Qantas on regional routes, Max is excited by what is known internally at Rex as “Project Mother”, its move onto Australia’s busiest air route using jets previously leased by the collapsed and now private equityresurrected Virgin.

Rex is also flying jets from Melbourne to Adelaide and from Melbourne and Sydney to Coolangatta.

Family and friends gather at Sydney Airport. L-R (back row) Rex 737-800 Flight Attendant, Belle Hazelton (Max’s granddaughter), Wally Flynn (Rex Ambassador), Max Kingston (Rex Ambassador), The Hon. John Sharp AM (Rex Deputy Chairman), Toby Hazelton (Max’s son), Georgie Hazelton (Max’s granddaughter). Middle row: (kneeling to the left of Max) Jock Hazelton (Max’s grandson), (behind Max) Kay Hull AO (Rex Ambassador). Front row: Max Hazelton.

“The areas have got so big — like Melbourne, Sydney — and once this pandemic is over, I think people will start travelling tremendously. I think that Rex, with the service they are providing on the 737s, will take a lot of beating,” Max says.

This week Rex started a price war with its rivals, offering $39 trips between the two cities, less than the cost of a bus fare. It sparked the biggest day of fare sales in Rex’s history, generating 10 times its normal daily ticket revenues.

“If they went any lower, we would have to pay people to fly with us. The $39 fare we are charging, most of that goes in airport taxes and charges and government taxes and charges. This is as low as they can go,” John Sharp quips.

He’s not surprised by the competitive response, which saw Virgin drop its fares to as low as $30. Jetstar and to a lesser extent Qantas also cut their prices. “We thought they would follow suit — they had to,” he says.

Sharp describes Max Hazelton as the nation’s “greatest living aviator and an absolute pioneer in regional and agricultural aviation”.

“Because of his ingenuity, the regulator had to keep changing the laws to accommodate new things Max came up with,’’ he says. “One of the great legacies of Max and Laurel is they created a family business culture which still runs thick through our business today and is the reason we have survived and a reason we are competitive not just in the regional space, but now the domestic space.”

Max Hazelton meets inaugural jet pilot John Veitch.

Sharp is speaking of Hazelton’s wife of 64 years, who was missing from his side that February morning in Sydney after she couldn’t make the trip from Orange. For decades she kept the Hazelton business wheels turning while her husband took to the skies, organising catering, pilot rosters and looking after the books.

Today she is sitting alongside him in their cosy home not far from the Orange city centre after Max, who now has a deep stoop when he stands, invited her to join our interview. Above the dining table atop a cabinet are a decorated array of model Rex and Hazelton planes. On the adjacent wall hangs a stunning painting of one of Hazelton’s first Saab aircraft taking flight.

On the table is a signed copy of the book on Max’s life by author Denis Gregory titled “The Hazelton Story”, launched in 2014 by famed entrepreneur Dick Smith.

“I think I got caught. It was a busy life, I can assure you. Aviation is a very interesting, challenging life,” Laurel says. “We had well over 200 employees and they were fantastic employees.”

Rex’s Deputy Chairman John Sharp and Max Hazelton at Sydney Airport in February.

In 1953 Max started his charter airline service in a paddock at Toogong near Orange, after borrowing money from his mother to buy an old aeroplane. He famously survived being lost for six days after walking 100km through thick bush when his plane crashed in bad weather returning from Sydney to Toogong, sparking what was then Australia’s biggest single rescue effort.

In 1959 he moved his operation to nearby Cudal where he and his pilots hand-built a runway and terminal, and Hazelton Airlines soon became renowned for its crop dusting and then night aerial cropping, aerial firefighting, flood relief and rescue work. It gradually expanded to be a major passenger airline feeding country areas employing 270 staff, carrying 400,000 passengers a year to 23 country ports.

Max still drives his immaculately maintained white Holden ute around the streets of Orange, occasionally falling foul of the law.

“A policeman stopped me six months ago driving from downtown to home. He asked to see my licence. I said it was in my wallet, which I had lost the day before, and that I was going to the motor registry to get another copy of it. He went back to his car, got on the radio and came back to me and said I was OK to drive. But a few weeks later a letter came with a $150 fine,’’ he says.

“I rang the local member and he told me to write a letter so I wrote to Transport NSW and told them what I thought of them. And they dropped the fine.”

Also in his garage is a 20-year-old luxury Holden Statesmen, which has only travelled 50,000km, including a single trip across the Nullarbor Plain to Perth.

Max once famously locked horns with Bob Hawke and the ACTU by defying a union ban to fly live merino sheep out of Australia. He also recalls flying Kerry Packer on several occasions from Sydney to his Ellerston polo property near Scone.

“Bob wasn’t very talkative, but his wife was. His kids were small then,’’ Max says.

While he hasn’t flown in an aircraft for many years, he has fond memories of his time in the air, especially running Hazelton’s commuter operations.

“The flying was great. It was always a challenge. No two days were the same. From a very young age, I was very keen to fly,” he says. But what he doesn’t miss is battling bigger rivals.

“Everywhere we went, like Armidale and Tamworth, it was working quite well but then Qantas came in, cut the fares considerably, and basically killed us. Because we couldn’t operate because we were paying higher fees each month on the SAABs. We couldn’t cut prices to match them,’’ he says. “They were fair old buggers doing that. Anywhere we went, they would cut the fares. That is the battle we had. Taking on the big boys like that is a very difficult situation.”

Max with the commemorative Rex cake. It was an emotional day, and he admitted: “It was very hard not to have wet eyes.”

Rex’s move to launch jet services prompted Qantas chief executive Alan Joyce to reiterate his long-held belief that there was only room for two competitors in the domestic market, a position rebuffed by John Sharp. Max Hazelton applauds Rex’s expansion plans and while the family has parted ways with Rex, Max and Laurel still have shares in the airline and attend each annual meeting as ambassadors.

The Hazelton name lives on in aviation through Toby Hazelton, who now runs his father’s agricultural flying operation, Hazelton Agricultural Services.

“It made it easier for me clientelewise, because the name was there. But then I had to live up to the name. It has been a great thing for me,’’ Toby says of taking over the business three decades ago.

His daughter Georgia is now also flying, while his youngest son Jock is studying for his pilot’s licence while he completes year 12.

“It is a great thing for the family. I didn’t have to encourage it (flying) with my kids — it is in their veins I think,’’ he says.

Other members of the wider Hazelton family also fly for Rex, Qantas, Cathay Pacific and pilot private jets for wealthy clients in America.

Max will always consider his greatest contribution to aviation was to help country people travel further and faster than ever before. His legend will live on in Rex’s motto plastered on the livery of its new jet fleet: “Our heart is in the country”.

“In the early days we were using very small planes. It meant a hell of a lot to those people to spend the day in Sydney and be able to get home at night. That was the aim,” he says. “The aeroplanes coming up to the country towns, it has certainly helped them get bigger to support them.”

This article first appeared in The Australian.