Last week QANTAS bid farewell to the last remaining Boeing 747 on their fleet. The flight was met with fanfare as many turned out to view the final flight of a plane which most today grew up with.

QANTAS made the decision to retire the Boeing 747 fleet entirely in May after the Coronavirus pandemic decimated international flightpaths worldwide. The retirement was brought forward multiple years as a month later QANTAS made a second decision to ground the vast majority of their entire fleet in airline storage Australia and worldwide.

The vast majority of the 747’s are to be retired and either scrapped or sold off in the Mojave Desert, California. The Mojave is home to multiple airline scrapyards with many looking like a visual wonder in today’s high-tech airline world.

Alan Joyce paid his respects to the plane he dubbed “the Queen of the skies” making reference to multiple important foreign missions the plane has flown for QANTAS during its history including the transport of Australia’s Olympic teams, Cricket teams, Bali bombing survivors and the COVID19 evacuation flights from Wuhan earlier this year.

QANTAS’ longstanding indigenous relations were also on show with Aboriginal elders conducting a “Welcome to the Country” ceremony for the plane and many signing the bottom of the undercarriage with permanent marker.

“It was always the Queen of the Skies – it was the most perfect aircraft you could find. It’s a really sad day,” a 35-year veteran first-class flight attendant Jen Perrie stated at the historic event.

“It’s such an emotional day. She was our family away from family.”

QANTAS first ordered the Boeing 747 in 1971 and was one of the first international airlines to own the plane. At the time, nicknamed the “Jumbo Jet” the Boeing aircraft was considered to be revolutionary both in its load capability and in the long distances it could travel.

Before making the direct route to California, the crew maneuvered a flight path which matched the QANTAS logo during the farewell event. A spectacle which the QANTAS team considered to be a fitting goodbye to the last plane of the fleet which made QANTAS what it is today.