hello I'm in a car parked next to Sydney International Airport and today I'm
flying to Melbourne with Qantas. Now they normally put 737s on this
route but today's flight is in a Boeing 747-400 ER and as you may know,
they're retiring all those by the end of this year so I'm taking every
opportunity to get onboard one. I've also just got a camera which is now filming in 4k
so I'm trying to collect as much good footage as possible. So let's head over
to the terminal. The journey begins at check-in and a real highlight of
terminal 3 at Sydney domestic is this replica Avro 504 K which was the
first ever aircraft delivered to Qantas in January 1921. It was a British design but
assembled in Mascot, right near the current location of this Airport, and was
used to fly around western Queensland doing joy flights and raising awareness of
the idea of flying. It's assembled from wood and fabric, which at the time was
the best compromise between strength and weight. It had a single 6-cylinder
engine which propelled it to a cruising speed of 105 kilometres an hour
for comparison's sake a 747 today would cruise at around 930 kilometres an hour.
It's fascinating to compare this 1920s aircraft with today's
747 which was a design from only fifty years later as the jumbo first flew in
1969. Now today's fight is an economy although I did a very similar flight
last year in business class from Sydney to Brisbane which gives perspective from
sitting in front of the wing. I've also included a whole lot of history and
technical details about this aircraft type which is unique to Qantas. I will
repeat some of the information and after this video make sure you check out my
other video and I'll link to that below. Once through security, I killed some
time plane spotting around the terminal. As I mentioned in the intro, the main
domestic workhorse of the Qantas fleet is the Boeing 737-800. This particular
one now is called Retro Roo 2, and while it's a brand new aircraft, it was
painted in the Qantas 707 livery from the late 1950s and I reckon looks pretty
fantastic.
This little Dash 8 shot past and you may notice that they actually run with a single
engine when they're taxing home to help save fuel, and here's our aircraft
VH- Oscar Echo Hotel which is a Boeing 747-400 Extended Range which was
delivered brand new to Qantas in 2003. Now while a 17 year old aircraft might
sound old, that's actually pretty normal for an airliner.
In fact the VC-25, which is Air Force One, first flew in 1987 and that's only about
to be replaced around now. After being distracted by this little incident which
I've since heard, and I'm not joking was actually a shampoo spill in the cargo
hold, we took off to the departure gate. One of the really cool things about this
flight was that it was advertised to the public
so it was essentially just 364 plane nerds sharing their avgeekery. There
are heaps of kids flying which is really cool because for many of them this will
be the last and maybe their only opportunity to ever fly in the Queen of
the Skies, and in fact for many adults as well this domestic 747 flight was
potentially their last ever in the Jumbo. As you'd expect there were a lot
of people already lining up the board so I went to capture some views of the
aircraft. Now I do quite like to film the aircraft pulling into the gate although as
you can see now, the view wasn't great so I joined the queue.
I entered by the forward doors and the really highlights just how long this
aircraft. This is business class with the aging but still fairly solid sky bed mk2
seats and I can't wait to fly in one of these to Santiago in a few
months, and of course I'll do a video on that.
next up is premium economy which is always a great option if the budget or
points balance can't be squeezed to get you into business and then we're
into economy.
now I usually research my seats fairly well but as so happens 56k doesn't
actually have a proper window although thankfully I could lean forward and
still enjoy the view. The economy seats are in a 3-4-3 layout and
unlike some modern aircraft, everyone gets their own overhead air vent which is
exciting. Otherwise it's a fairly standard economy set with a touchscreen,
tray table, adjustable armrests which included power plugs in them and this
rather weird net thing which you can rest your feet in.
so here's the USB port in the armrest and no window although, as you can see, I
can kind-of lean forward and see how this one. One thing I really noticed on
board the 747, especially in comparison to newer aircraft like
the 787 and A380, was how noisy the interior is with his unfortunate hum
droning out some of the announcements the chief flight attendant did an
awesome intro and tribute to the 747 and you'll hear that shortly
once we back out and the flaps extend.
This entire aircraft is an engineering marvel and the wings, in particular, are
very cool as you'll see shortly. The three-part slotted flaps extended from
the wings trailing edge, which is behind it. Now according to Wikipedia,
this increases the wings surface area by 21% and lift by almost 100%
Customer service manager introduction...
after sitting in waiting for some landing aircraft to arrive, including this
Royal Australian Air Force Desault Falcon 7x, it was our turn to take off.
We took off south and then briefly out over the ocean before crossing back
overland just around Wollongong. I commented in
another video that I really love the view of sunrise and sunset from 40,000
feet but another inflight view I love is breaking up through the clouds during ascent.
As I mentioned earlier today's aircraft is a 747 400 ER which stands for
'extended range'. Qantas were actually the only airline
that bought these continuing a tradition where Boeing especially modified
aircraft for unique Qantas requirements, which is essentially very long flights
across the Pacific and Indian Oceans. The extended range - 400s, of
which Qantas had six of them, are the only remaining jumbos left in their fleet and
sometimes called 910Ks recognising the 910,000 pound or
just over 400,000 kilograms maximum takeoff weight and literally over half
of that weight can be made up of fuel. The increased takeoff weight was due to
the strengthening of the landing gear and structural modifications so it could
have either one or two extra fuel tanks and therefore fly another 800 kilometres
or carry an extra six thousand eight hundred kilograms of freight.
The ER models also came with this uprated general electric cf6 engines while the
standard - 400 came with either the CF6s or the good old Rolls Royce
RB211s. As this was just a 72 minute flight, there was just a snack provided
which was fine. Once we escaped to Sydney most of New
South Wales had reasonably clear skies and it was great to see everything below
getting a little greener as many of you would know Australia has had some really
bad bush fires over the last few months and only just this last week or two the
entire east coast of the continent has had a bucket load of rain extinguishing
the fires and brings some relief from the drought I flew this route just a few
weeks ago and sadly it was very black and brown so it was great seeing
everything a bit greener. Just southwest of Bright, we started our descent from a
cruising altitude of 36,000 feet. To help speed up the whole process you can see
the speed brakes were deployed just as we flew over Mansfield. I'll keep quiet
until after we land but make sure you listen carefully to the announcement
shortly after were touched down the views of the condensation were pretty
epic and while I obviously preferred to fly in clear sunny skies, having just
gone through the summer that we have, it was actually pretty nice to see some
rain.
The crew were obviously also caught up in the 747 festivities so they announced
that afterwards people were invited to visit the flight deck. I had to run to
the next flight but it was cool to see the gate full of people taking photos
and selfies with the aircraft. It was also quite poignant that we were parked up
next to a new Boeing 787 Dreamliner which is essentially the aircraft's
replacement. And as always, thanks for watching. Please give the video a thumbs
up and if you enjoyed it, check out my channel for many more aviation geek
videos and follow me on Instagram and Facebook and finally please comment
below on what the Qantas Boeing 747 means to you and share any particular
memories of it you may have. Thanks again