The first scheduled passenger jet flight from Australia ready to depart live on black and white TV, © Qantas
This afternoon 50 years ago saw the start of the jet age for passengers in Australia, and on the Pacific.
Qantas flight EM774, a Qantas 707-138 took off at 3.35 pm on 29 July 1959 for San Francisco via Nadi and Honolulu, and made the trip in only 14 hours 57 minutes.
It was the beginning of the end for the Super Constellations and for the scheduled ocean liners.
Sydney in 1959 and for a further three to four years was mainly connected to the rest of the world by the last of the great passenger shipping lines.
It was much more the harbour city than now. There were no skyscrapers, and the deep throated sound of the steam horn of a departing liner would carry for miles across the inner and eastern and north shore suburbs.
Dockside, at the wharves a brass band always played, and the streamers stretched between ship and shore, between parents and son and daughters off to see the world, to take the working holiday that was literally the great rite of passage for most of the generations of the 20th century outside of the wars.
Waving from the top of the stairs never quite replaced a band and streamers, © Qantas
On the Pacific, which Qantas chose as its first jet route, Matson Lines took the cream of the Pacific trade, with 16 day long sailings, and a clientelle drawn not only from celebrities, but rich American widows and divorcees who famously in those times, scoured the south seas for some action.
Qantas that afternoon also became the first non-US carrier to operate the Boeing 707, which had been introduced in comparatively small numbers across the Atlantic and on transcontinental American routes.
First class inside the early model 707 © Qantas
It was a remarkably spacious flying experience. There were only 60 seats in tourist class, and 24 in a first class that while not as spacious as business class today, came with a quality of catering and personal attention not found on any of the airliners of the present.
The mother of the skies appearance of that era © Qantas
The Qantas flight bag became the accessory of choice of generations of school children, and probably made someone a millionaire on the concession to mass market it, but somewhere in the memorabilia of much older Australians there will also be ticket folders like this.
Now this is a TICKET © Qantas
And photos or old fashioned letters to home from a generation that didn’t go on flying holidays that lasted for weeks, but trips that lasted one or more years.
The 'must have' school bag at the dawn of the jet age © Qantas
7 Comments
“There were only 60 seats in tourist class, and 24 in a first class that while not as spacious as business class today, came with a quality of catering and personal attention not found on any of the airliners of the present.”
Yeah but how much was a return airfare in today’s dollars.
The fares were so expensive that for some years afterwards it was less costly for young Australians to sail for weeks on ocean liners and be fed three times a day than pay for an air fare. Hence my reference to the habit, before jets became more routinely affordable, to holidays that were not measured in weeks but years.
By about 1964 the time/money equation tipped strongly to jets, and the costs of ocean travel went north while those of airliners went south. Australians also became more prosperous. Car ownership that had been rare became common, the consumer economy began to resemble that of the US of the 50s, and lots of changes, seen more sharply in hindsight, began to work through ‘our’ world.
The bands stopped playing, the streamers were no longer held dockside, the great passenger liners vanished, the skyscrapers rose, and different work and play cultures took root.
The past was not paradise, nor convincingly of more merit that current times, but it was certainly remarkably different, and I do not glimpse a 707 or similar without connecting with it.
Thanks for this story Ben. A big month for aerospace anniversaries with the moon landings etc. Next month is an anniversary for communication satellites. Also 50 years since the first 707 crash with fatalities.
Two things I notice in respect to the 707 footage: the tourist-class seats appear to have more width and pitch than economy-class seats in our current wide-bodied jets, and everybody is so well dressed. Most men appear to be wearing jackets and ties. How costs and times have changed.
“Qantas flight EM774, a Qantas 707-138 took off at 3.35 pm on 29 July 1959 for San Francisco via Nadi and Honolulu, and made the trip in only 14 hours 57 minutes.”
Wow … 2 fuelling (I presume) stops enroute and the trip still only took an hour or so more than today’s non-stop flights take!! 50 years of technology and what have we got … planes that fly further and with lots more passengers, but can’t get where they’re going any quicker!
I was surprised too. The early 707s were somewhat faster than the later versions and had a greater wing sweep, which was changed in the interests of better fuel economy and more range, but came with reduced cruise speed and also happened at much the same time the early turbo-jets were replaced by higher bypass turbo-fans.
But it still seems to have been an amazingly quick flight, considering you cleared customs at Honolulu before going on to San Francisco.
Apart from speed, the jet revolutionised transcontinental transport in two other ways: safety and reliability. The jet engine was far more reliable than the big piston engines (can’t confirm, but someone told me that the Connies on the Oz-London route used to carry a spare engine in cargo due to the frequency of engine failures) and the jets flew higher, getting them out of a lot of the bad weather.
That trip time is probably total flying time, hence the ~1 hour longer then today’s direct flight to take into account the increased time requried for the extra descents and climbs back to cruising altitude. If they were including total end to end time then there must be a couple of more hours at least on the ground. Mind you, US customs was probably a lot nicer and quicker back then then it is today!