After a near 20-year career with Qantas, Boeing 747-400 VH-OJU will have a second life flying as a Rolls-Royce test aircraft.
Dawn of the silent, clean, ion machine. Who knew that we’d be looking for the same qualities in both aircraft and roommates?
A key milestone was achieved at the Boeing Everett factory in Washington in November when engineers completed assembly of the major fuselage sections of the first flight-test B777X, the manufacturer’s latest long-haul, twin-aisle jet.
When an innovative New Zealand company develops a cutting-edge aerial camera system a stone’s throw from an airport where a helicopter operator services A-list movie productions, it offers a fortuitous match. Add to that jaw-dropping scenery of mountains, lakes, valleys, waterfalls, forests and fiords, of epic movie proportions on their doorstep, and that’s a trifecta.
There was a time when being first into the market with the latest jet from Boeing or Airbus was a winning formula for progressive airlines. Over the past few years, however, being a prime mover has become a risky and highly costly business as repeated operational glitches plague some of the newest models.
To mark the first of three Project Sunrise nonstop research flights from New York to Sydney, this story from the Australian Aviation archives comes from May 2018, when Gerard Frawley wrote about the experience of being on Qantas's inaugural Perth-London Heathrow nonstop service.
