The low-cost carrier will add more than 140 new evening flights on the route, as well as upgrade more than 170 existing A320-200 services to A321s, increasing capacity by 14 per cent over 2024. In total, Jetstar will offer more than 350,000 Melbourne–Sunshine Coast seats in 2025.

The airport recorded 277,000 passengers last month, up from a pre-COVID-19 December high of 271,154 in 2019.

The aircraft, A9-497, was lost during a 1944 mission when it made an emergency water landing off the coast of Darwin. Remarkably, all four crew members survived the incident and were rescued the next day.

The company, an offshoot from the Swedish aerospace giant, said ‘TactiCall’ integrates multiple comms technologies into a single intuitive interface and includes radio infrastructure and avionics equipment.