Description
From its first Qantas flight in 1971, the Boeing 747 flew millions of people to Australia, overseas for work, back to their homelands, on holiday and out of danger. For most Australians, the 747 was their first experience of international travel. And now, history’s most iconic commercial aircraft is scheduled to be decommissioned around the world.
In this jet-set nostalgia journey, Jim Eames – bestselling author of The Flying Kangaroo and Courage in the Skies – tells us how the 747, a watershed in aviation technology, dramatically changed air travel, and recounts the high points of its life at Qantas, including the uplift out of Darwin after Cyclone Tracy, the return of the Diggers to Gallipoli and the evacuation of Australians from Wuhan. We discover how the 747 came in all shapes and sizes, eventually becoming the 747-400, which set a world distance record from London to Sydney. We also find out about the near misses and how close we have come to disaster on several occasions. And finally, we remember the 747’s farewell to Australia, when it departed our skies for the last time in 2020.
The Mighty 747 is the jumbo’s Australian story, and is woven with the humour and nostalgia of the people at Qantas who sold the 747 to Australia and who made it work on the ground and in the air.
Paperback, 272pp, 2022
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