Australia first saw a foreign airliner in 1933, when Imperial Airways operated an Armstrong Whitworth Atalanta survey flight from Croydon through Asia to Darwin and following the inland route to Brisbane, Sydney, Canberra and Melbourne. Scheduled international service began in 1935, when Qantas used DH-86 biplanes between Brisbane and Singapore on a four-day multi-stop route,…

I have just seen details of the first regular oceanic airship service, which was operated from May 1933 seasonally for five years. The dirigible LZ 127, ‘Graf Zeppelin’ flew (initially once monthly) from Friedrichshafen, the base of the Zeppelin company in Southern Germany, to Rio de Janeiro. Stops were made at Barcelona and Pernambuco (now…

Airline geeks like me may know this name as the inner-city airport in Rio de Janeiro, and also as the pioneer of aviation after whom the airport is named, and of whom Brazil is very proud. I am also proud to own his autograph, on a 1930s vintage timetable of Air Union, one of the…

In 1939, when air travel was just starting on the long oceanic crossings, there was only one option for such journeys. Passenger liners, accompanied by freighters that usually carried only a small number of passengers on less regular schedules, operated on every ocean. I’ve just found the Official Shipping Guide, in which most shipping lines…

The new generation of airliners that was developed in the USA in the 1930s included the Boeing 247, an all-metal 10-passenger low-winged monoplane, 60 of which were built for United Airlines. Orders from other airlines were denied, resulting in the development of Douglas DC-2s and DC-3s and Lockheed Electras, which together monopolised US domestic air…

I have been reminded by a Facebook post by astronomical artist Don Davis of the Hale-Bopp comet of 1997, a year that was a red-letter one for me. As a pensioner of BOAC (now British Airways) I was able to fly on a stand-by basis on their flights (and some other airlines). Flights from Australia…

When my father was posted from Britain to Kingston, Jamaica in 1951, my parents took my two younger siblings with them. I was by this time at an English boarding school and it was thought I would be better off staying there, and staying with relatives for the holidays.  BOAC had recently taken over the…

The first passenger intercontinental flights were based on European countries with colonial empires: KLM (Netherlands), SABENA (Belgium), and Air France all commenced services in the late 1920s from their home countries to outposts in Africa, and together with Imperial Airways of Britain soon started flying to the Middle East and Orient.  The short ranges of…