Henry Rodolph Wigley (b. 1913, d. 1980) continued the Kiwi tradition of being first with an aviation exploit and then having the world largely ignore it. In Wigley’s case, he was the first to land on snow in a plane that had skis as well as wheels. He also survived, which makes the story even more interesting. Wigley was born in Christchurch. His father started up what was to become Mount Cook Airlines and his mother designed their distinctive logo, based on the Mt Cook lily, which isn’t a lily at all but a huge buttercup that grows in the region. The young Wigley learned to fly at an early age, but in 1936 was lucky to survive an incident when the aeronautic plane he was passenger in had a near miss.
The air force plane was attempting inverted flying, looping and rolling at low altitude and managed to clip a parked bus, losing part of its undercarriage as a result. The plane landed safely with no injuries to Wigley or the pilot, although two newspaper reporters in the bus did get a nasty fright. The incident clearly didn’t faze Wigley too badly, and he went on to be a World War II fighter pilot in the Pacific, a mountain climber, a national downhill skiing champion and an astute businessman.
On 22 September 1955, he attempted his own aviation feat of daring. With one Alan McWhirter as his passenger, he took off from Mt Cook village in a plane with a hand-crank attachment of his own invention with which he could lower either wheels or skis depending on whether he was landing on ground or snow. He had to lean out the window to operate it, but having spent years developing the system, Wigley was in no doubt that it would work, and he safely guided his four-seater Auster aircraft in to land on the Tasman Glacier.
This was the first time a plane had taken off on wheels, and landed on skis – overseas, aircraft were equipped with skis for snow take-offs and landings, but the use of both wheels and skis was unknown.
This flight was repeated later in the day with Sir Edmund Hillary on board and again, the ski system worked flawlessly. So good was the system, that within a year Mount Cook Air Services Ltd was running commercial ski plane operations. Henry (or Harry as he liked to be called), was knighted and went on to follow in his father’s footsteps and become chairman of Mount Cook Airlines. In 1975 he recreated his original landing in the same aircraft, and with the same passenger as on the original flight.