In 1989, Qantas secretly gathered its best people to plan and execute an aviation milestone: the first direct flight between London and Sydney. In this exclusive extract from his new book, The Mighty 747, Jim Eames tells the inside story of how they pulled it off

Amid an ongoing skill shortage within Australia’s aviation sector, hundreds of specially trained and highly skilled employees have left the country beneath our very noses, possibly never to return. Hannah Dowling investigates.