Qantas, in the midst of a ferocious cut-price fare battle with United, Delta and V Australia on the Australia-US route, has celebrated a 50-year milestone.
It is 50 years on Wednesday since Qantas operated the world’s first commercial passenger jet service across the Pacific Ocean.
Flight EM774, the first to be operated by Qantas’ new Boeing 707 aircraft, departed Sydney at 3.35pm on July 29 1959, bound for San Francisco, although it was not a direct flight.
It included stops in Nadi and Honolulu.
Qantas, in celebrating the milestone, made a dig at its rivals, particularly US-based Delta and Sir Richard Branson’s V Australia, that began offering US-Australia flights this year.
Qantas has a proud history on the Pacific route, having flown uninterrupted service between the United States and Australia for 55 years (50 of which applies to commercial passenger jet service.
Qantas remains the largest carrier on the Pacific, operating 43 roundtrip flights every week between the US cities of Honolulu, Los Angeles, New York and San Francisco and eastern Australia and also Auckland, New Zealand.
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July 30, 2009 at 5:43 am