An automatic lighting system installed at Goulburn airport only six weeks before the incident saved one of Masling Aviation's most expensive aircraft from certain destruction and its occupants from death, The Canberra Times reported on this day in 1977.
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The Masling Beechcraft Queen Air was on a routine freight flight from Melbourne to Sydney with three people aboard when at 1.54am the pilot advised Sydney that both his engines had cut out.
Department of Transport search-and-rescue procedures were brought into operation when the pilot advised that he believed he could glide to Goulburn if the lights there could be switched on.
The $250,000 Queen Air then made a relatively drama-free, if unusually quiet, landing.
Mr Masling said that the pilot-initiated automatic lighting system had been one of his "hobby horses" for many years.
"We put in one of our own at Cootamundra about 10 years ago," he said.
![The front page of The Canberra Times on February 9, 1977. The front page of The Canberra Times on February 9, 1977.](/images/transform/v1/crop/frm/197687315/922c330f-8a8f-4464-9966-f609095f4195.png/r0_0_1244_1675_w1200_h678_fmax.jpg)
"It was fairly simple. The radio code tripped a switch which in turn put the lights on.
"Ours did not have the double system the department put in theirs as a back-up but it worked satisfactorily enough.
"Just as well they had it in at Goulburn. It certainly saved three lives and paid for itself already."