ANA and government's new TAA airline putting strong squeeze on Adelaide's Guinea Airways in late 1940s
The CV-240 aircraft leased from TAA by Guinea Airways in 1958 to compete with the Butler Air Transport's Vickers Viscounts on the Adelaide-Broken Hill route.
The end of World War II, brought new pressures for Adelaide’s Guinea Airways. It sold off several aircraft, including the Lockheed 14H VH-CXJ, bought by a Mr Linke who kept at his suburban Prospect property until it was broken up in 1975.
Guinea was left with two Lockheed 10As, a Lockheed 14WF62 and two Douglas C-50s. It leased or bought 11 DC-3s in 1945. At the company’s annual general meeting that year, with profit noted at £8,659, shareholders rejected a merger with Australian National Airways (ANA) and the directors (including original chairman C.T.V. Wells) were replaced.
During 1945, Guinea and ANA agreed to share staff and hangar at Parafield, but Guinea operations were to be under ANA at Essendon, Victoria. About 120 Guinea maintenance staff at Parafield were retrenched.
Guinea also soon lost 10 senior pilots to the federal government’s new Trans Australia Airlines (TAA). The federal government in 1945 also set up the Australian Airlines Commission, with power to cancel private operators’ licences. It refused Guinea permission to resume services in New Guinea.
In 1947, Guinea sold its two Lockheed 10A aircraft. Its Lockheed 14H was leased to ANA for the Brisbane-Cairns route, then became a standby aircraft at Parafield, before being withdrawn from services, left in the open for two years and sold to Sims Metals for scrap in 1951.
Although its profit was up in 1947, Guinea ended its Darwin service that year after it lost the Darwin mail contract to TAA. That left Guinea with services to Ceduna, Whyalla (via Port Pirie), Broken Hill, Port Lincoln and Kangaroo Island with charters for the Weapons Research Establishment at Salisbury from 1951.
Among the DC-3s leased or bought by Guinea in 1945 was VH-AER. It later went to TAA (1946), East West Airlines (1955) and was later used as a children's party venue at McDonald’s Restaurant in Adelaide’s West Lakes.
