Reg Ansett

Sir Reginald Myles Ansett KBE (13 February 1909 – 23 December 1981) was an Australian businessman and aviator. He was best known for founding Ansett Transport Industries, which owned one of Australia's two leading domestic airlines between 1957 and 2001. He also established a number of other business enterprises including Ansett Pioneer coachlines, Ansett Freight Express, Ansair coachbuilders, Gateway Hotels, Diners Club Australia, Biro Bic Australia ATI also bought out Avis Rent a Car and had a 49% interest in Associated Securities Limited (ASL). In late 1979, mainly due to the collapse of ASL, Ansett lost control of the company to Peter Abeles of TNT and Rupert Murdoch of News Corporation who became joint managing directors.

Biography Early life Reginald Myles Ansett was born in Inglewood, Victoria, on 13 February 1909.

Career He went north to work as an axeman in a Northern Territory survey team. For a time, he entertained the idea of buying land in the territory to grow peanuts. Looking around for an alternative, Ansett decided to try an air service. What made this attractive was that air services were controlled by the Commonwealth government, so the state could not intervene. On weekends he took the Universal on barnstorming tours of Victoria giving joyflights to paying customers. had dampened public enthusiasm for airline investments. Underwriters refused to handle the float so he had to find investors himself.

Both the coachline and road freight businesses were highly successful businesses and by 1962, Pioneer Coaches was running 245 buses throughout the country. In 1956, he established an airfreight business using Aviation Traders Carvairs which were Douglas DC-4s converted to enable cargo to be loaded through the nose.

Ansett was the first Australian airline to move into the package holiday business. In 1947, Ansett started offering services to resorts on the Great Barrier Reef using Catalina flying boats. Questions were asked about where Ansett would obtain the funds. There were stories about backing from two major oil companies. Later that year, on 23 August, ANA accepted the original offer. The ailing ANA operation was taken over by Ansett Transport Industries to create a new national airline: Ansett-ANA. Ansett was now in the big time, but he still had to make Ansett-ANA competitive with the government airline, TAA, which was much better managed and had a superior aircraft fleet.

Ansett acquired ANA's fleet of Douglas DC-6s and acquired six Vickers Viscounts in order to better compete with TAA. After the acquisition, Reg Ansett suddenly became a firm supporter of the two-airline policy. It became more restrictive after the passage of the Airlines Equipment Act in 1958 prescribing what aircraft each airline could buy and much else besides. Reg Ansett had advocated the act to stop TAA from buying French Sud Aviation Caravelle aircraft which would have been the first jets imported into Australia.

During the late 1950s and 1960s, Ansett purchased a number of regional airlines including MacRobertson Miller Airlines, Guinea Airways, and Butler Air Transport. Ansett also offered services to New Guinea. In 1964, Reg Ansett would import the first Boeing 727s following a coin toss with the managing director of TAA as to which company would import them first. In 1968, Reg Ansett changed the name of Ansett-ANA to Ansett Airlines of Australia. By 1969, Ansett had become Australia's leading domestic airline and its market share would rise as high as 55%.

He expanded his business interests into television in the 1960s. In April 1963, his Austarama Television company was granted a television licence to operate Melbourne's third commercial television station ATV-0, starting constructing studios in Nunawading a few months later. ATV-0's first official broadcast was on 1 August 1964. Ansett expanded his television interests to become a major shareholder in Universal Telecasters, licencees of TVQ-0 Brisbane, in 1965 and buying out the station entirely in 1970. He was appointed Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire (KBE) in 1969. At that point, he was managing director of Australia's biggest airline and the biggest transport company in the southern hemisphere. Because of its regional services, Ansett was the world's biggest operator of Fokker Friendships.

Challenges in the 1970s In 1972, Peter Abeles' Thomas Nationwide Transport launched a takeover bid for Ansett Transport Industries. This bid was thwarted with the assistance of Victorian Premier Sir Henry Bolte. This was due to both a longstanding friendship between Bolte and Reg Ansett. Moreover, Bolte was keen to save a Victorian company from being taken over by a NSW firm. After Bolte's retirement, he would become a director of Ansett Transport Industries.

Ansett's views on women in aviation were widely viewed as sexist. He once described stewardesses over 30 as old boilers and claimed that women were unsuitable to be pilots because of their menstrual cycles. In 1978, Deborah Wardley took the company to the Victorian Equal Opportunity Board for discrimination. Under the new management structure, Abeles and Murdoch would be joint managing directors Abeles would merge the freight operations with TNT and run the airline.

In 1980, Ansett sold TVQ-0 to a joint venture between petrol company Ampol and Sydney radio station 2SM.

Personal life He married twice. From his first marriage, to Grace, he had two sons, John and Robert (Bob). After their divorce, Grace took the boys to live in the USA. He married Joan Adams in 1944 and they adopted three daughters, Janet, Jane and Jillian.

Death Ansett fell ill several months before his death, and returned home from the Peninsula Private Hospital at Frankston to spend Christmas with his family. The first indications of the seriousness of his illness came at the annual meeting of Ansett Transport Industries Ltd in November when, for the first time in 44 years, he failed to attend and give his chairman's address. He died on 23 December 1981 at his personal estate in Mount Eliza.