QUEENSLAND'S GERMAN CONNECTIONS - PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE

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Fifty years to Frankfurt The delivery of the first of seven turbojet Boeing 707-138s in early 1959 brought Qantas into the jet age, allowing the replacement and retirement of many of the prop-driven Super Constellations. Deployed from July that year on the Trans-Pacific route, and from October to London on the Kangaroo Route, the 707s halved travel times to and from the Fifth Continent. Qantas services to Frankfurt began in 1959, and the red-and-white Boeing 707 ‘V-Jets’ became regular visitors to the bustling Rhein-Main airport, along side airlines from around the world. Connections between Queensland and Germany have traditionally been via connections at Singapore or other Southeast Asian ‘hubs’ with, today, a 12-hour nonstop leg to Frankfurt to follow. That said, the editor still fondly remembers his first overseas trip, to Germany in July 1978. The Boeing 747-238B operated QF723 Brisbane – Darwin – Singapore, with an aircraft change to the other ‘jumbo’ coming up from Sydney as the QF15, as it was then. Today, in a world of one-stop or nonstop flights to just about anywhere, it is remarkable to recall the many sectors of 35 years ago … the night leg from Singapore across to the oil flares of the midnight transit of Bahrain, late night refuelling at Athens–Hellinikon, and the cool, crisp dawn light creeping across the tarmac at Vienna–Schwechat, final stop before the morning arrival into Frankfurt. There is no better cure for jet-lag than stepping off a 30-hour flight and spending six hours in an office window in the centre of Frankfurt, unpacking more than 30 aircraft models, doing running repairs as needed and then re-assembling a complete display in full view of curious passing pedestrian traffic. Every arrival in Germany of the dozens since then has been much easier … and, somehow, much less interesting. I have connected seamlessly to Berlin, bought a ticket for an ICE train and arrived a couple of hours later in Hannover, and I have got myself utterly lost trying to navigate a rental car from the A67 to the A63 to head towards Trier. There’s an expression which reminds us that we always remember our ‘first date’ – Germany has that effect, and it IS possible to have a heart in two homelands. As this book was closing for press, the end of the 50-year relationship was announced, with the last QF5/QF6 rotation to Frankfurt to operate sometime in 2013.

Above: One Queensland connection with Germany began 35 years ago, as this page 9 item from the Frankfurter Abendpost , 30 July 1978, indicates; the editor had hand-built a collection of models of every Qantas aircraft throughout its history.

Above: In the morning summer sunshine of June 1980, Boeing 747-238B VH-EBM is seen taxiing to its Terminal 1 gate at Frankfurt, arriving as the QF15 from Sydney. Image courtesy Gerhard Plomitzer Main background: Dramatic arrival at Frankfurt

on a crisp winter’s day in December 2010, Boeing 747-438 VH-OJT raises a thunder of reverse-thrust snow and water vapour, on the far side of the world from the

scorching summer Down Under. Image courtesy Thomas Merkl

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