Kaye McLachlan wasn't rostered to work on November 15, 1972.
But when a colleague called in sick, she agreed to suit up for a flight from Adelaide to Alice Springs.
The Ansett air hostess – or hostie, as they were known at the time – could never have guessed what would follow aboard the Fokker F27 Friendship.
Thirty minutes before the aircraft was due to land, a male passenger armed with a sawn-off rifle and a sheath knife emerged from the toilet and announced to a flight attendant: "This is a hijack".
Half a century on from one of the most terrifying events in the nation's aviation history, the bizarre November day remains etched in Ms McLachlan's memory.
"It was a bit surreal. I was a little bit dazed as to whether it was really happening or not," she recalled.
"In Australia, it wasn't something that was expected."
An ordinary flight
The journey on Ansett flight 232, carrying four crew members and 28 passengers, had begun like any other.
Miloslav Hrabinec, a Czech migrant, sat quietly in Seat 4A without drawing the attention of the crew during the morning tea service.
"He just kept hunched over looking out the window," Ms McLachlan (then Goreham) recalled.
"We went through with a meal service, and he wasn't interested in coffee or tea or anything to eat ... he just kept looking out the window.
"He was a very easy passenger from our point of view."
As the the air hostesses were collecting the last of the tea and coffee cups prior to the descent, a bout of turbulence pierced through the cabin.
Then, Ms McLachlan looked up and saw Hrabinec emerging from the toilet.
"He was holding a gun and he had a big Bowie knife strapped to his waist, and I just did a double-take and thought I must be seeing things," she said.
Hrabinec told Ms McLachlan and another hostess, Gai Rennie, he was hijacking the plane, before shepherding them towards the cockpit.
A switched-on crew
The captain was notified of the unfolding events but declined to speak with Hrabinec, telling his crew he was at a "critical point of landing". He said everyone must sit down for landing.
Ms McLachlan, Ms Rennie, and the gunman remained in the galley and obeyed.
The plane landed safely at the Alice Springs airport and stopped at the end of the runway, where Hrabinec was finally able to outline his demands.
He told the captain to take off again and fly out into the desert, so that he could parachute out of the plane. The hijacker said it was his desire to survive for as long as he could, and then take his own life "in a spectacular way".
"He said, 'I don't want money, that surprises you doesn't it?'"
The captain told him, however, there were no parachutes on board and there wasn't enough fuel to fly out again.
Hrabinec let most of the passengers off the flight. He then demanded the use of a light aircraft, which he could take out into the Red Centre plains to fulfil his wishes.
A light aircraft and a policeman in disguise
Negotiations got underway, with local pilot and flying club manager Ossie Watts volunteering himself and his Cessna aircraft.
Mr Watts taxied his plane nearby, accompanied by an undercover police officer named Paul Sandeman, who posed as his navigator.
By the time the Cessna arrived, the crew and remaining passengers had been held hostage for more than four hours, in sweltering 40 degree Celsius heat.
Hrabinec forced Ms McLachlan out the rear of the aircraft and towards the Cessna, where he saw Constable Sandeman sitting in the back.
"He got very suspicious and he indicated for that person to get out," she said.
"After several gestures, Paul got out of the light aircraft and the hijacker asked me to search him.
"I felt in his right-hand pocket – it was facing me – a small gun, but I didn't tell the hijacker it was there."
Caught in the crossfire
As he continued negotiating, the young constable-in-disguise slowly moved closer to the hijacker, to the point that he was close enough to lunge for Hrabinec's gun.
But the hijacker was too quick and caught a hold of the officer's arm, yanking it down.
Constable Sandeman was shot in the hand in the process, and then Hrabinec pushed him backwards and fired a shot at his stomach.
Amid the fracas, the officer's concealed gun fell out his pocket. Despite his injuries, he got himself up and began to run away to seek cover, wheezing as he moved.
"When he started to run, I ran the other way behind the light aircraft," Ms McLachlan said.
"It all just happened in a matter of minutes."
Mr Watts, who had been handed a gun by Constable Sandeman minutes earlier, got out of his light aircraft and began firing.
Meanwhile, police marksmen had been creeping up and joined in, wounding Hrabinec in the leg amid a flurry of gunfire.
The hijacker hobbled off the edge of the runway and into some bushes, where he hid.
"Then, we heard another gunshot," recalled Ms McLachlan.
"He'd put the gun under his chin and tried to take his own life."
Hrabinec died in hospital later that day.
Miraculously, Hrabinec was the only fatality that day. Constable Sandeman – who was shot four times in total – suffered serious injuries but survived, and was later pensioned out of the police force.
A lucky escape
Reflecting on the fateful day, Ms McLachlan said she felt immensely lucky to have survived, and lives each day accordingly.
"I've tried to live my life in gratitude," she said.
"It could have easily gone wrong and I might not be here today.
"I've had a lucky life and I'm just grateful that we all came out of it."
Despite the traumatic ordeal, Ms McLachlan continued working in the airline industry until her retirement, spending several decades as an air hostess and booking agent.
In a sign of the times, she said she was surprised when her crew was offered the next day off work.
"Counselling wasn't a thing that was done in those days," she said.
"We were flown back to Adelaide, which we were quite surprised about. We thought we'd actually have to continue our trip up to Darwin the next day."
Ms McLachlan said: "The company doctor met us with some sleeping pills and said 'if you can't sleep, take these, and if you really need time off, we can give you a week'.
"So we all said, 'Yes, we'd like a week', and then we just got back on the job."
It took several months before police could identify the perpetrator as Hrabinec, and an inquest in 1973 concluded that the shot that killed him was self-inflicted.
Constable Sandeman was awarded the Queen’s Commendation for Bravery in Alice Springs in 1973.
