Episode 300: Back to Qantas and the F35

Congratulations all round for the Airplane Geeks team as they’ve hit 300 episodes and “Woo hoo” to us too as we’ve been along for a big chunk of the ride too. Of course, given all the re-takes we’ve done and the “themed” AusDesk episodes we produced, it feels like we’ve done well over 300 Australia Desk segments already :)In amongst all of this, we take you back to Qantas as, after all, it’s been a couple of months since we last talked about them and they’ve not gone away yet (well, not entirely :)To begin with, they’ve announced that they’re going to start voluntary redundancies for the 747 & 767 pilots as those aircraft are reduced in number or, in the case of the 767, phased out entirely.They’ve also worked with Emirates to set up a surcharge for people flying internationally on weekends, which is rather odd given how often Qantas have complained about the Australian Government increasing their departure tax.To hopefully distract us from this news, Qantas are celebrating their 60th anniversary of flights across the Pacific. The linked story has some photos showing rather scary fashions from the 70’s & 80’s :)Then, for a change of pace, we talk about the latest announcement from the Australian Defence Minister that the Australian Government are considering the purchase of the F35B STOVL variant of the F35. This is in addition to the 72 F35As already confirmed.Finally, we round out by chatting about Hobart’s runway being upgraded so that it can handle A330’s & 777’s, allowing international flights from Asia to operate directly to our southern-most capital city.