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Aviation History
1964
1964 - 2027.PDF
Since April Qantas Boeings have been including Hong Kong as a traffic stop on the London - Sydney service Airline Profile / NUMBER SIXTEEN IN THE SERIES dANTAS BY THE AIR TRANSPORT EDITOR [ OT everyone knows what the V in V-Jet stands for, and quite a few people might be at a loss to remember what the initials QANTAS denote. Qantas stands for more than Queensland and Northern Territory Aerial Services, a full style and title which belongs to earliest history of Australian civil aviation. For 43 years Qantas has been a name doing honour to those ideals to which all airlines aspire: safety, efficiency, and service. It is not every airline about which one can write that. For the record, V stands for vannus, from the Latin meaning fan. A ponderous semantic contrivance, especially as it really means a "thing that blows against the grain." But no publicity emblem requires such contriving as do the three ideals just mentioned. In its 43 years Qantas have never, touch wood, lost a passenger, except through enemy action; and they have never made a loss, except for one year in the twenties which no one can quite remember exactly. As for service, unless one has flown with the airline for 43 years it is rather difficult to say whether service has always been as good as the best; but so it was during a flight around the world, in both first and economy class, that we recently experienced. This length of time in any transport vehicle, even with a number of short stopovers, takes some enduring. The Pratt & Whitney JT3D-1 vanni, coupled with a faster-than-most cruise (Mach 0.84), make for slightly more noise (less quietness?) than a VClO-spoilt passenger is used to. But the feeding and everything else is dispensed with the rarest blend of mateyness and deference—interesting, because there is nothing of the flunkey in the Australian make-up. Only one of the six or seven cabin staff is female, because Qantas hosties are married within two years of their training, and no wonder. The virtue made out of this economic necessity is pretty incontrovertible; first-class servants in ships and hotels are always male, and so they are in Qantas airliners. Qantas was founded in November 1920. One of the first two aircraft was an Avro 504K. The other half of the initial fleet, also acquired in January 1921, was a war surplus BE.2E, the 90 h.p. RAF engine and prop of which today stand in the entrance to the Qantas engine overhaul shop. Next addition to the fleet was an Avro triplane with a cabin for four passengers and costing the earth —£A4,000. It never went into service, being grounded as unsafe, though not before finishing second, with young Hudson Fysh— now, as Sir Hudson Fysh, chairman of Qantas—at the controls, in the 1921 Aerial Derby. The next machines were three Armstrong Whitworth FK.8s; a DH.4; a Bristol Fighter modified for mail carrying and ambulance work; and two DH.9Cs. The first big improvement in passenger accommodation came with the DH.50 late in 1924. After four years' service these machines, converted as air ambulances, inaugurated Australia's legendary Flying Doctor Service. Qantas did this job for 21 years until in 1939 it was taken over by TAA. DH.50Js with the Bristol Jupiter engine were built in Australia, and although they were a big step forward they still had one shortcoming—no powder room. This was remedied by the eight-passenger DH.61— the "Giant Moth"— introduced in 1929. Two 61s, Diana and Apollo, flew the Queens- land inland routes and Apollo did the first experimental Australia - England air mail service on April 25, 1931, flying from Brisbane to Darwin where it linked up with a DH.66 of Imperial Airways. It was Diana, together with DH.50J Hippomenes, which opened the first regular Australia - England service for the newly registered
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