The advent of the gas turbine revolutionised civil aviation. Airliners routinely flew much higher and faster than ever before, necessitating corresponding changes to airspace design, Air Traffic Control procedures and navigation facilities. When the Boeing 707 was introduced by Qantas in 1959, the Department had no aircraft of similar performance. The introduction of the Boeing 727 to domestic airline operations in 1964, however, reinforced the need for the Department to obtain a jet aircraft of its own.

In order to gain experience with jet aircraft operations and to have a vehicle that could operate within broadly similar performance parameters to the aircraft operated by the airlines, DCA purchased one of the first business jets to come on the market, Hawker Siddeley HS125 VH-CAO. This aircraft served well for over twenty years before being sold. And when VH-CAO was temporarily unavailable due to an accident, DCA leased HS125 VH-ECE from Qantas.

In the late 1980s, the Department of Aviation used the proceeds from the sale of a surplus Fokker F.28 to fund the purchase of a more modern model HS125, VH-JFT. This aircraft was disposed of in the early 1990s.

Click on the images below to see photos of the Department's HS125s: