Munro denies bridge stunt

Press, 26 January 1988, Page 1

Munro denies bridge stunt

By

DAVE WILSON

The biggest question mark hanging over Boyd Munro’s Tiger Moth flight across the Tasman Sea is whether he was the pilot of the Tiger Moth that flew under the Sydney Harbour Bridge on Sunday.

“I deny it was me,” t he said from his Sydney home last evening, while confirming there were rumours afoot in Sydney linking him with the stunt Mr Munro, who flew his white Tiger Moth 3635 km across the Tasman, said he believed the pilot who swooped under the Sydney Harbour Bridge at the same time he was flying over Sydney was also flying a white Tiger Moth. “It could have been another white Tiger Moth or maybe a homebuilt aircraft that nobody knows about. But I deny it was me” he said. Mr Munro spent yesterday relaxing after his flight which began in Christchurch on January 15 and involved oceanic crossing legs from Ninety Mile Beach to Norfolk Island, then on to Lord Howe Island and Sydney. After celebrations in Sydney on Sunday evening, he said it was time to stop, adventuring and get back to work. “I’ve had a January holiday without parallel.” Mr Munro said the over-water legs of his flight, involving a total of 20 hours of flying, were completely incident-free. The only mechanical problems, which were minor, happened to his modern support aircraft. But having reached home with his biplane, the prize he won in the Singapore-Christchurch air race last year, he said there would be no more such adventures with the biplane. “I would definitely not do that again even though I enormously enjoyed the experience.” He said the crossing had been meticulously planned with rigid safety precautions. “There was really only a 1 per cent chance of me ending up in the water,” he said. Although Mr Munro won the 47-year-old biplane, he had to pay sAustlo,ooo duty when he arrived at Kingsford Smith Airport, and this was only part of the total cost of the crossing. He refused to specify what the flight cost him, but said “It was expensive.” However, Mr Munro must be one of the few international arrivals not to have to suffer the agriculture and fisheries spraycan ritual. “We wondered how they would get on with an open cockpit aircraft and there were photographers out at every stop to photograph the moment. But unfortunately none of the spray-can people were game to come out.” He said the Tiger Moth, still wearing its ZK-BLQ New Zealand civil registration, would take part in a Tiger Moth race in Australia,