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Qantas has marked 60 years since its first commercial jet service to New Zealand.
Flown by the Boeing 707 “V-jet” VH-EBL, the hop from Sydney to Christchurch on 10 April 1965 was the first ever commercial flight across the Tasman with a jet aircraft.
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The trans-Tasman route had previously been served by Lockheed Electra propeller aircraft, and before that, 15-seater Shorts Empire Flying Boats, which made the journey between Sydney and Auckland in around nine hours – three times the length of today’s flights.
“Over 10,000 people turned out at Christchurch International Airport to welcome the inaugural V-jet service, which was commanded by Chief Pilot Line Operations, Captain ‘Torchy’ Uren, and NZ-born cabin crew members Bob Bishop, Alan Williams, and Alan Gill, as well as Anne Claydon from Lyttelton in Christchurch,” Qantas said in a LinkedIn post.
“Qantas Founder Sir Hudson Fysh and Lady Fysh were also onboard the inaugural service.
“Today, the Qantas Group operates 360 flights across the Tasman each week, offering over 3 million seats between the two countries each year on a mix of Boeing 737, Boeing 787, Airbus A320, and Airbus A330 aircraft.”
Qantas had been the first non-US airline in the world to take delivery of the 707 in 1959, and flew its inaugural jet service from Sydney to San Francisco via Nadi and Honolulu on 29 July of that year.
“The aircraft’s pressurised cabin and powerful engines meant it could fly higher, avoiding bad weather, resulting in a smoother journey,” Qantas said in 2019 to mark the 60th anniversary.
“At the time, we proudly promoted that the aircraft offered not one but two galleys including innovations such as a ‘coffee maker which produced 12 cups of coffee every three minutes’.
“French cuisine was offered and inflight entertainment consisted of a deck of cards and it would be common for pretty much everyone on board to be smoking.”
Later 707s, like VH-EBL, were dubbed “V-jets” – from “vannus”, the Latin word for “fan” – to denote their newer, more powerful turbofan engines.
“Boeing would go on to build a special Qantas version of the aircraft which was three metres shorter and fitted with more powerful engines allowing us to use shorter runways,” Qantas said.
Qantas retired its last 707 in 1979, and the VH-EBL registration now belongs to a 16-year-old A330-200 in the airline’s “Pride is in the Air” livery.
