Hi all.

After 50 years, the last 747 in Qantas service flew out of Sydney last night on its way to the aircraft graveyard in the Mojave Desert.



I tracked it on the "planefinder" app and got some screen shots as it left a unique flourish on its way out over the Pacific.



I did some rough measurements and this looks to be almost a 1000km round trip from "toe-to-toe" before getting back on track.

The links below have some more info.
https://www.qantasnewsroom.com.au/media-releases/qantas-farewells-queen-of-the-skies/
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-07-22/last-qantas-boeing-747-leaves-a-message-in-the-sky-for-australia/12482338

Cheers, D

Truly the end of an era...

Sad to see the 747 retired: Such an iconic aircraft and one of the more enjoyable to be a passenger in....

Thank you for sharing D!

PS. What a great flight path!

Hi,

sad news. especially since it was recently reported that British Airways plans to retire its entire fleet of 747's

30 in total, apparantly the largest user of them

Oddly, I was reading yhe original post before I went to work this morning(5am) in the UK and they showed the Qantas logo being formed by the aircraft as shown above.

Regarda Jason

Sad they're going, but what they did on the last flight was amazing! Are they replacing them with A380's or 787's?
My grandparents flew on a Qantas 747 from Heathrow to visit my uncle in Melbourne back in the early 90's. Quite exciting for me and my sister to get lots of photos and postcards from from Australia.

Yeah very sad that the 'Queen of the Sky' will be disappearing from passenger service. There was a fair bit of coverage by Big Planes TV of the retirement of the Virgin Atlantic 747's over the last few weeks. Plenty of freighters will keep on operating the 747 though. The newer A380's also appear to have had their day, astonishing really as its a relative newcomer compared to the 747.
tim

Current fleet as at July 2020


From Wikipedia - In December 2019, Qantas announced it had selected the Airbus A350-1000 for its Project Sunrise program of non-stop flights from Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane to cities such as London, New York, Paris, Rio de Janeiro, Cape Town, and Frankfurt. No orders have been placed but Qantas will work closely with Airbus to prepare contract terms for up to 12 aircraft ahead of a final decision by the Qantas Board. Due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on aviation, plans for Project Sunrise were put on hold indefinitely.

Cheers, D

I had my flight from Frankfurt to Sydney in 1989 with a 747 - but with the blue-yellow "Crane-Airline" ....