Newsgroups: sci.aeronautics.airliners Path: news From: sandee@Think.COM (Daan Sandee) Subject: Re: 747-400 delivery flight (was :747SP X-Submission-Date: 5 Dec 1992 21:44:28 GMT References: Message-ID: Approved: kls@ohare.Chicago.COM Organization: TMC X-Submission-Message-Id: <1fr7rsINN57s@early-bird.think.com> Sender: kls@ohare.Chicago.COM Date: 08 Dec 92 15:50:53 PST In article , drinkard@bcstec.ca.boeing.com (Terrell D. Drinkard) writes: |> In article davidm@questor.rational.com (David Moore) writes: |> >I have no idea why they were delivering via London. |> |> Possibly to reproduce the MacRobertson Race of 1932 or '33. That went from |> London to Sydney, as I recall. The Boeing 247 and the Douglas DC-2 came in |> second and third behind a special build DeHavilland racer. That was a |> remarkable period of change in the airplane industry. However, that race |> tooks a few weeks (all of this is from memory - I don't have any references |> on it, or if I do I don't know where they are :-). For the sake of historical accuracy, London to Melbourne, 1932. As I remember, the DC-2 (a standard version flown by a KLM crew) came in second (first in the handicapped class) and might have won overall if it hadn't had engine trouble a couple of hundred miles from Melbourne. The race took around ten days. Cruising speed, 250-300 mph. Individual legs 1000 miles max (they couldn't fly Darwin to Sydney nonstop, had to refuel in some awful place in the interior). As Terry says, it showed the ongoing revolution in the airline industry. As to the Qantas delivery, LHR-SYD was presumably the route they needed to advertize, more so than LAX-SYD which would have been the obvious one. Daan Sandee sandee@think.com Thinking Machines Corporation Cambridge, Mass 02142 (617) 234-5044