Trans Australia Airlines Flight 454

On 21 September 1982 five men were arrested by Queensland Police after a daring $600,000 robbery attempt at four Queensland airports. The men, all from Melbourne, were associates or close to the . Four men consigned themselves as freight and planned to rob a Reserve Bank of Australia shipment during Trans Australia Airlines (TAA) flight 454, but cargo porters at Rockhampton Airport called police when they saw a hand quickly pull down the lid of a wooden box.
Police later discovered men hidden in freight boxes stacked with telephone books at Mount Isa, Townsville and Brisbane airports. Another man was arrested at Townsville Airport, while one man was discovered in a box at Brisbane Airport after apparently missing the flight to Cairns.
The plan was for the person in the box to remove the Reserve Bank money during the flight and substitute it with the telephone books.
Breathing hose
The men arrested at Rockhampton and Townsville were found with $200,000. Each box had a breathing hose but the man discovered at Rockhampton had difficulty breathing and was trying to get air when noticed. Police then realised the highly co-ordinated robbery might be more than it first appeared and contacted federal police at other airports.
Prompt action by TAA in Brisbane led police to other flights at Mount Isa and Townsville. The plan also backfired when the man hidden in the box destined for Mount Isa found that the crate with the Reserve bank money was in a different cargo hold.
Stowaway in a box
Flight 454 took off from Brisbane Airport (Eagle Farm) and headed towards their next destination, Rockhampton.
After offloading the freight at Rockhampton the flight crew were notified they had a stowaway in a box. Informed by First Officer Brian McCarthy, Captain Spring-Brown went down and talked severely to the box. When nothing happened, he instructed McCarthy to go and get the handcuffs, baton, fireaxe and gun (the crew did not in fact have one) to chop its occupant out.
Upon hearing this, the stowaway came out of the box hyperventilated and in a poor state. Spring-Brown then asked "Who are you and what are you doing?" to which the reply was "Give me a go, mate, I've got no money and I'm trying to see my family". The flight crew, who up till then had felt a little bit sorry for the stowaway, then looked inside the box and noticed brand new telephone books, bottles he had used as a toilet, torches, breathing tubes. Most dramatically, they saw a vast pile of money, prompting Spring-Brown to say: "What do you mean there's not enough money, you've got a lot here". With that the stowaway started to take off, somewhat wobbly.
The chase
A porter then ran under the aircraft only to get caught in the flat DME aerial, while Spring-Brown ran around the nose. Untangling himself, the porter reached the fugitive and grabbed him by his boxer shorts, as the captain jumped on his back. Spring-Brown later noted: "Here was 100 sets of eyes looking down from our aircraft looking down at me, sitting on this chap with the porter with his pants halfway down."
The five men connected at the time with the robbery were: John Stewart, Robert Bowers, Robert Davis, Lance Woolcock, Robert Kidd.

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