Flight Time To Sydney
 

Having recently travelled LHR~SIN~SYD in just under 20 flying hours, I wondered what was the timescale of commercial flights?

How many days did it take? I know that the Empire service was day time flying only. Flying Boats? I guess the post war heavy propliners were next, then the Comet and VC10 - how many stops for them?

Many thanks.

BOAC introduced the Britannia to the LON - SYD route in 1957.

Flight time Eastbound 39H Total elapsed time 46H

Flight time Westbound 43H Total elapsed time 50H

More Info here

The articles above that one are interesting too.

One lists the westbound routing: Sydney-Darwin-Jakarta-Singapore-Calcutta-Karachi-Istanbul-Zurich-London (phew!).

And another suggests that, had the Orion-engined Britannia gone ahead, it would have been able to fly London-Sydney with only two stops. Not bad going when even 60 years later you still can't do it non-stop. :O

For cabin crew in the 1970's the favourite route was through the West.

LHR-JFK-LAX-HNL-NAN-MEL-SYD the return would be either back the same way or SIN-CMB- BAH -FCO-LHR there were some variations on this. 21 days for rostered trip but often longer if technical delays. Aircraft type VC10.

. .. . once upon a time nine days of leisurely daylight stages was the go . . . when Qantas and Imperial shared the route. ..

http://t1.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:A...dl3Bi7fZAKpiMK

in 1968 when British Eagle were using their Britannia for the immigration charters to Australia,the flying time was about 36 hours with a total journey time of about 40 hours
The routing was London-Kuwait-Ceylon-Singapore- Darwin- Sydney.
With the VC-10 in the early 1970s it was much more popular to go via the Pacific route
which took about 30 hours flying with a total journey time of about 35 hours. The routing was London-New York-Los Angeles-Honolulu- Fiji- Sydney

1961 a Vulcan from 617 Sqdn captained by Sqn. Ldr Beavis.

Scampton - Sydney none-stop. 20 hours 3 minutes.

214 Sqdn placed Valian BK1's in Cyprus, Karachi and Singapore to refuel the Vulcan.

As for a more exact date, I'd have to look up my old passports.

I was with the Karachi detachment.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Mg5FUe_W7c

Didn't carry many passengers. :O

And I bet they didn't carry much in the way of relief flight deck crew, either. Twenty hours in those seats, sustained only by cardboard meals and with three refuelling brackets to meet? In those early days, a feat to compare with the later Black Buck raids I would have thought.

And with the world watching and waiting for you to make a mess of it.

Respect.

Don't forget to add the fact that up until the early 60s a lot of the calling points were in countries that were, or had been until recently, pink on the map. With most of the travelling public still going by sea, such flights were the regular service from London to Oz and all points in between.

One error on the Pathe news clip.

There were 4 re-fuelling's not 3.

Overhead Cyprus, overhead Karachi, then north of Singapore and a top up south of Singapore.

Technically, they did carry a passenger, the crew chief!

Many thanks everyone.

RAF VC10, UK-Singapore, 1969:

Brize, Akrotiri, Bombay, Gan, Tengah - maybe 30-odd hours (does anyone know better?).

A trip made all the more disorientating (for a 6 year old) because all the seats faced rearwards for safety!

Dean

London to Sydney by BOAC Boeing 707, except I did it in VC10s!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FUm9aG-xiBk

Apart from the lack of range, the reason for multi stop services to Australia is that there was insufficient UK-Australia traffic to fill the aircraft. BOAC had fifth freedom rights at almost all of the intermediate points and point to point traffic was important.

This is actually still the case, certainly for a daily operation, and adds to the other reasons why a 777LR nonstop operation would not succeed. Although London is dominant at the UK end, the traffic spreads across multiple ports in Australia, with even Sydney well under 50% of the total, all of which favours Multiple UK - ME3 hub - Multiple Australian operations.
Actually they did fly at night, particularly taking off before dawn, using a "flare path" of floating kerosene lamps anchored in the water. Night-time takeoffs were more straightforward in the boats than landings. As significant was that the same crew stayed with the aircraft for several days at a time, and needed a night's rest. They commonly slipped crews just a couple of times, maybe Karachi and Singapore.

Here's some old timetables :


1939 Imperial Airways

http://www.timetableimages.com/ttima...s/iaw39u-2.jpg


1947 BOAC. A tremendously fast, and long-legged, service for its time, by converted Lancaster bomber, only 4 stops to Sydney in 3.5 days.

http://www.timetableimages.com/ttima...47/ba47-05.jpg


1958 BOAC Bristol Britannia and Qantas Lockheed Constellation. Both operators could now take you either way. More stops though than in 1947

http://www.timetableimages.com/ttima...58/ba58-02.jpg


1971, last year of VC10 and 707 monopoly before the widebodies.

http://www.timetableimages.com/ttima...71/ba71-36.jpg

Thread drift. (but it's my thread!:cool:)
Thanks WHBM. I remember my great aunt telling of how wonderfully fast the new Imperial Flying Boat service was (drawing on a brain that was 12 years old when she told me:

1. Taxi to London Waterloo
2. Boat train to Southampton
3. Lighter to the Flying Boat
4. Paris (not sure which span of water)
5. Northern Italian Lakes (I think)
6. The Nile
7. Lake Victoria
8. The Vaal River
9. Cape Town / Table Bay
10. Taxied to a jetty.
11. Her driver would meet her(!)

Night stops were everyone off and into a hotel. Dinner was formal with everyone 'dressed for dinner' and the Captain at the head of the table.
Only took about four days (I think). I sit to be corrected.

Not anywhere near Paris suitable for an Empire boat. Usually flew direct from Southampton to Marignane near Marseille. Landing site in Italy was Lake Bracciano outside Rome.

Didn't the Italians, under Mussolini, build a lake next to Milan Linate Airport, specifically for flying boats?

One of the side effects was the morning mist, that obscures visibility over the tarmac runway at Linate.

Thanks Groundloop.