Australian Airways Boeing 707-120B

Australian Airways was a major user of the Boeing 707. Flying as far as London among other places, the 707 revolutionized travel for all Australians, as it opened up travel to more people. Bringing down the cost of flying even further, whole families could now afford to fly all the way to Europe and/or the United States.

The first 707 arrived down under on 20 June 1958, and first flew passengers on 28th of the same month from Sydney to Los Angeles via Nadi and Honolulu. The first flight to London took place on 30th of June as AU1, flying passengers from Sydney to London via Darwin, Singapore, Kolkata (Calcutta at the time), Karachi, Bahrain, and Istanbul. \

In 1959, both the 707-123 and -320s arrived in Sydney. The 707-123 was a shortened 707 that was designed and built specifically for Australian Airways for it's extended range capabilities that would enable more routes to be viable. They ordered 10 of them, and so therefore only 10 were built. The type was actually also going to be ordered by Pan Atlantic Airways of Britain, who planned on ordering 6, but this never happened. Boeing had plans to rebrand it as the 707-5XX if more airlines ordered it, but this never happened.

Anyway, the 707-120s were in service from 1958 until 1973. The last flight was Nadi to Sydney on 1 July 1973. By 1977, all of the remaining 707s were stored in the deserts of the southwest USA, scrapped, or flying for other airlines. Unfortunately, all of the -120s were scrapped by 1988. However, 4 of the 707s still survive today. One of the -123s is in the Australian Airways Museum in Alice Springs, one of the -320Cs is in an aviation museum in Melbourne, another -123 is owned by actor John Travolta, who plans on donating it to an aviation museum on the Australian East Coast, and lastly, a -320B is sat derelict in Tehran in Persia Air colours.

Overall, the 707 was a pioneering aircraft for Australian Airways. It opened heaps of new destinations, made flying a more affordable for more people, and made Australia, a nation known for it's relative isolation, closer to the rest of the world.

VH-ABV: 1963 Boeing 707-120B | Australian Airways | Currently: Scrapped in Mohave in 1986