Now you only need to work two weeks to buy a ticket London!

A report by Steve Creedy in The Australian says that 60 years after Qantas started the kangaroo route, the number of weeks an average Australian has to work to buy a return ticket to London has plunged from 130 to just 2!

When the Lockheed Constellation set off for London on December 1, 1947, travellers were paying £585 for a return fare, with the average weekly wage at the time £7 and a house cost between £600 and £800.

A $2000 return fare these days is just a fraction of the cost of a house and less than twice the average weekly earnings of Australians in full-time employment.

The introduction of the jumbo jet and cheap excursion fares on the route in the 1970s proved a catalyst that has since allowed hundreds of thousands of Australians to make a journey once reserved for the rich.

Qantas executive general manager John Borghetti still remembers seeing the flyers for $700 return fares to London, saying, “Obviously, $700 was a lot more than than it is now, but it was revolutionary at the time.”

“Not only did you pay very little but you also flew on a jet – a 747 – and in those days the thought of a movie on a plane on a big screen in the cabin was outstanding.

“Now you get on a plane and it costs you a lot less in relative terms.” “You have your choice of 300-odd channels, whether its movies or music, as well as all the technology that goes with it.” “And, of course, it’s a faster trip.”

Rewind to 1947 and the change is even more startling.

The Lockheed Constellation carried just 29 passengers, needed 11 crew and took 55 hours to fly the route. The flight time did not include the six stopovers, including two overnighters. The first service departed from Sydney and flew to Darwin and then to Singapore, where it stayed overnight.

It then flew to Calcutta, Karachi and Cairo, where it again overnighted, before continuing to Tripoli and London.

By contrast, the Boeing 747-400 flying the route today carries 412 passengers, needs just 19 crew and does the trip in 23 hours with just one stop.

The importance of London as a destination is underscored by the fact that Qantas still dedicates more than a third of its 747 fleet to the kangaroo route and from next year will introduce the airline’s new flagship Airbus A380 superjumbo.

Mr Borghetti does not see its status changing any time soon. “It’s hard to see Qantas reducing its presence on the UK route,” he said. “It’s a very important route in just so many ways, and it’s just such as significant part of international network.”

“Los Angeles and London, they are two of our core routes and therefore we keep investing in them, not only by way of additional flights but by way of new equipment.”

Mr Borghetti said the airline had yet to decide on a schedule for the A380s, but a London service was likely to be introduced shortly after Los Angeles.

He said the new plane would be another step change for the route in terms of technology, comfort and product.

He nominated the introduction of the Boeing 707 and the jumbo as the other big changes. He said the 707 sliced travel time and noted that Qantas was the first operator of the jets outside the US.

“Undoubtedly the 707 made it more comfortable, faster, enabled air fares to change,” he said. “So that was a significant step change.

“The next one was the 747, which did exactly the same things”.

“It was a bigger aircraft still and there were more economical airfares.”

“There was more comfort, entertainment – as I said, movies on a plane were unheard of – and it enabled us to make less stops on a route.”

And will that last stopover also ultimately be eliminated?

Mr Borghetti said there were no aircraft, as yet, that could do the journey economically and he also posed the question of whether travellers wanted a 20-hour non-stop flight for the relatively small time savings of one or two hours.

‘That still has to be tested,” Mr Borghetti said said.

“So it isn’t just a question of operating non-stop, it’s a question ofhow do you reduce the time significantly?”

“And that is a more difficult issue.”

A Report by The Mole from The Australian