Capital Air Services was the air charter arm of the Wellington Aero Club. ZK-DAI was ex VH-PQA and returned to that registration in July 1973 after 3½ years in New Zealand. Mike Madden photo

On the tarmac at Brisbane ( Eagle Farm )

VH-PQA after years on the fire dump. This is not the aircraft painted as VH-PQA in the Queensland Air Museum collection. That is VH-BHK.

Briefly used to operate services out of Griffith that had been flown by DC-3s. Not viable. Services taken over by third-level airlines with a lower cost structure.

The fashions of rural Queensland in 1965. The Ansett group embraced the Piaggio P166 and they served with all the group's airlines. Ultimately running third-level air services with first-level airline costs saw Ansett withdraw from smaller towns in favour of commuter airlines started by air charter operators. The Fokker F27 became the smallest aircraft operated by Ansett.

This noisy little P166B was the first of only six produced.

Airlines of NSW started operations with VH-PQA in the Riverina region of New South Wales in January 1967 but within the year the aircraft was parked in the Essendon graveyard. The experience hastened the licensing of third-level (commuter) airlines in Australia to take over regional DC-3 services that were not viable with Fokker F27s. Third-level airlines typically paid general aviation wages, which was not an option for Ansett-owned Airlines of NSW. -PQA would return to scheduled services in 1968 with one of the new third-level operators, the aptly named Commuter Airlines, based at Essendon.