Issue 325: Dream Machine?

In the late 1980s Boeing’s 747-400 was the pinnacle of civil aviation, with its advanced two-pilot ‘glass’ cockpit, while its new generation fuelefficient engines and then revolutionary winglets gave the aircraft the range to reliably cross the Pacific nonstop and the ability to reach London with just one stop, all with 400 passengers on board.

Its introduction into Qantas service came at a time when the airline was flying high, fresh off Rain Man’s [not entirely accurate] 1988 endorsement that “Qantas never crashed”. A time when its reputation for technical innovation and operational excellence was unsurpassed, an era when the international-only airline flew nearly one in two international passengers into and out of Australia.

In the following 25 years Qantas estimates OJA flew some four million passengers over 46 million nautical miles, safely, efficiently and comfortably.

Then on March 8 the aircraft that holds the record for the 747-400’s longest flight also made what is believed to be the type’s shortest, the 51 nautical mile hop from Sydney to Illawarra Regional Airport, where, after a full and productive career, OJA will go on display with the Historic Aircraft Restoration Society.

HARS is a fitting home for OJA, given it operates Lockheed Constellation VH-EAG, which is painted to represent a Qantas aircraft, and that many of the organisation’s volunteers are ex-Qantas staff.

And judging by the thousands of people who lined the fence at Albion Park to watch OJA complete its final flight the aircraft will be a hugely popular tourism attraction for the Illawarra region – testament to the popularity of Boeing’s ‘Jumbo Jet’ in the popular imagination, and the special place Qantas still holds in the Australian psyche.

It’s a fitting end for OJA’s remarkable career, an aircraft that not just spanned continents and oceans, but whose flying career has spanned perhaps the most tumultuous period in Qantas’s history.

Think about how much has changed at Qantas in the 25 years OJA was plying the flight levels: the merger with Australian Airlines; privatisation; the collapse of Ansett; the rise of Virgin Blue/Virgin Australia; the launch of Jetstar; successive federal governments’ pursuit of open skies policies; continuous cost-cutting programs; 2007’s failed private equity bid; the October 2011 grounding; 2013’s “transformation” plan with its 5,000 job losses followed by 2014’s “confronting” $2. 8 billion loss.

Through those events and shocks, Qantas has been transformed.

Through those events and shocks, Qantas has been transformed from a government-owned, international-only airline to an airline “group” where its domestic (ex-Australian Airlines) business and its Jetstar offshoot are its biggest drivers of growth and profitability, and where its traditional international airline division flies just 15 out of every 100 international passengers into and out of Australia.

Who can predict in another 20 years’ time, when Qantas’s first A380 – VH‑OQA, itself a historically-significant aircraft due to the QF32 uncontained engine failure incident, which, thanks to the actions of its crew, again demonstrated Qantas’s traditional technical excellence – is retired to an appropriate Australian museum somewhere, just what Qantas will look like? But for now Qantas is to be congratulated on having the foresight to preserve OJA, an aircraft that represents so much to so many, both Qantas staff and Qantas passengers.

And the fact that Qantas management had the “headspace” and the confidence to dedicate time and effort into the preservation of an otherwise near worthless old aeroplane speaks well of where the company is now at, so soon after that confronting loss. Remember it was only 18 months ago that Qantas was pleading for special government assistance and changes to the Qantas Sale Act to allow it to cope with aviation’s “unlevel playing field”.

Instead, just days before OJA touched down at Albion Park, Qantas announced a strong return to profitability in the first half of the current financial year, with some market analysts now forecasting a billion dollar pretax profit for the full year. Now that is a Qantas that is bouncing back.