Potentially the last Qantas B747-400ER flight

Sigh........................look at that beautiful, iconic, mighty, but graceful gal. Such fond memories.......still think about her now and again and smile. Sad to see her enduring legacy being diminished over the last several years with more and more carriers putting her out to some forsaken boneyard where she and her sisters eventually go to die. Ugh.
 
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My first 747 flight was one of the -ERs back in 2005, LAX-SYD.

The fate of the remaining QF 744s hasn't been conclusively determined. Qantas doesn't have much international capacity beyond the A330/B787/A380 and the A380s likely won't be operating anytime soon either. I suspect there's a better than average chance you'll see them back at some point.
 
My first flight on a 747 was a redeye from NY to LA with Candice Bergen as a chaperone. I was very naughty. Of course I was a rambunctious toddler at the time so I suspect at least a small percentage of the passengers were amused by my brother and myself shedding our clothes in the middle of the night and running up and down the aisles, at least I hope they were. True story with no exaggeration.

Edit: I did some recollecting and that whole escapade had to've happened in '74 or '75. It certainly was a different time.
 
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Flyinthrew said:
Entertainment stethoscopes. Why was that a thing?

Since we're all pitching in, my first 747 was on ANA from Okinawa to KIX followed shortly by NWA KIX to MSP.
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I suspect because nobody would steal them lol, what else would they work on? Pretty sure I spent more time figuring out how they worked than I did listening to whatever was coming through the hose :D
 
Always wanted to fly on one of America West’s 747-200s when they had them, being my hometown airline and all, but never got the opportunity to.
 
One of my favorite all-time airplanes, so many memories with the awesome crews. Anytime they'd thank me, I'd thank them back for marsupials, Tim Tams, keeping huntsman spiders isolated from the rest of humanity, anything but for Fosters. When I thanked them for Fosters once, an angry old captain came back with "Naw mate, Fosters is piss water! We don't drink that crap. We drink Victoria Bitter". A Qantas 747 was also the most likely aircraft to greet you with a big fat "AHOY", regardless of who they were talking to, and to recite pirate facts/jokes when no one asked for them. Even to SFO Tower\Ground who never knew where to respond or why the hell it kept happening. Also big fans of Shark Week. The engineers at SFO were some of the coolest people I've ever worked with, they would use the callsign "Vegemite Deluxe" with the 747, and "Vegemite Supreme" for the 787. One of them was a spotter and I'd send him in loops all around the ramp area to get cool pictures of stuff from the elevated 747 cockpit when there was no other traffic. The Qantas managers were awesome too and I probably had more fun in their office\airplanes than most of them did. A damn shame that 2 days after Qantas said flights from SFO-MEL\BNE would be replaced by an upgrade of SYD-SFO back to the 747 which left months earlier the strategy changed to, "Actually, literally no one is flying so we're gonna go ahead and retire these things and just stop flying to SFO".

I'll miss sitting there in silence then occasionally getting jarred back awake by an emphatic "Oiiiiiiiiii!" when Qantas was ready. For some reason, the 787 crews were rarely non-standard unlike folks on the bigger jet, so that witty and fun atmosphere is mostly gone with the 747s.

KLM 747 pilots were also cooler than most of the other crews, and damn would they taxi that thing like it was a CRJ and they could fit anywhere., but the Qantas 747 and it's crews will always be my favorite.







 
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