A Classic Farewell

Qantas retires the 737-400

It could have been just another departure from Canberra for Melbourne had it not been for the fire trucks spraying their watery salute. Just another shuttle run, another day at the office. In fact, as the Boeing 737-400 spooled up to taxi under its own thrust it was actually powering towards the end of an era. The 737 ‘classic’ was saying farewell.

What’s in a name?

The term ‘classic’ is bandied about a good deal these days. Like ‘legend’ and ‘awesome’ the true meaning has been dulled by its frequency of use. In the airliner world, the term has actually retained its original meaning in defining something of lasting worth or possessing a timeless quality. For the Boeing 737, the ‘classic’ was most readily identified by round analogue dials on the flightdeck and an absence of blended winglets on its wingtips. Between the first 737-100 that flew in 1964 and the -200 series that was the first to ply Australian skies under the Ansett banner, little changed with the jet’s appearance until the pencil-like Pratt & Whitney JT8D engines were replaced by the flat-bottomed cowlings of the high-bypass CFM56 engines in the early 1980s. This change in powerplant gave birth to a larger range of aircraft, designated as the -300/-400/-500 series. In later years, these were the aircraft labelled as the ‘classics’. The success of the Airbus A320 saw the emergence of the 737 ‘Next Generation’ in the form of the -600/-700/-800/-900 series. Towering winglets on most models, a more efficient wing, GPS navigation and an almost fully EFIS flightdeck transformed the aircraft in many ways. Still much of the 1960s heritage could be found in areas like the flightdeck’s overhead panel, even if the systems behind the switches had changed.