190909_073917_0583 "Hey, This Piece of S**t Is Gonna Get You To London! Er, Eventually."

            London Heathrow Airport
With apologies to Bill Paxton playing Fred Haise in Apollo 13.

Yes, that piece of s**t DID eventually get us to London, but it was in cattle class ("Thanks for all that lovely Frequent Flyer money and the higher priced ticket, here's nothing in return") and over a day late because Qantas maintenance couldn't keep smoke detectors (first developed in the 1890s) working.  Oh yeah, and I was really impressed by the missed approach coming into Singapore the night before... no, wait, it was the night before that of course... that was an experience. Not a good one but that summed up most of that trip on #QantasSucks.

If I never see that accursed bloody plane again it will be a thousand years too soon.

That also goes for seeing the inside of a Qantas aircraft.

For the record, although I can't see any relevant markings in this shot I found a couple of frames that I picked up while in line to board at Singapore. The nosewheel bay doors show the ID code "QD", which would make this an A380-800 (A380-842 sub-model) with the registration VH-OQD, and carrying the name "Fergus McMaster". 

Who?

He was one of the three founders of Qantas.

Wait, weren't the founders of Qantas Hudson Fysh and Paul McGinness, World War I vets and fighter aces? 

They were. But you know how the Three Tenors consisted of Pavarotti, Placido Domingo and the other guy? Yeah, McMaster was "the other guy" of the Qantas trio. Apparently he wasn't a pilot, but a good businessman. Still, the fact that he's relatively unknown these days is probably why his name was attached to this hunk'o'junk.

It was delivered in 2009, and went into storage in 2020 as part of The Great Pandemic. It returned to service in February 2022. Its last couple of flights at the time of writing (August 2022) were on QF11/QF12 to and from Los Angeles, though it cursed QF1 and QF2 the week before that.
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Edit January 2025: I cannot believe, at all, that THIS of all photos is my most viewed one on Flickr. And not by a small amount either, I'm talking about by a factor of almost 2*. (And the second place one is a shot I took of a Van Gogh at the National Gallery, so, not that special either.) I cannot explain it, unless it has attracted other victims of VH-OQD (there were several hundred of them on that flight) who want to stick voodoo pins into the photo.

Edit March 2025: Second most viewed now, since one of my photos made it into Explore. That happened just before my renewal was due. Coincidence, I'm sure. But since I've re-upped for 2 years I doubt that will happen again any time soon. Ok, maybe that's too cynical. Or maybe it's not. But the reason that this is the former #1 is the Flickr search engine. If someone searches for a word - ANY word - and that word is somewhere - anywhere - in the title, description or keywords, it will show up in the results. The newer a photo is, the more likely it will show. Some of my London album photos used to pull in multiple views per week when they were first posted. Barely any do these days, although this one still averages about one or two per week. The word "sucks" (as in "Qantas sucks") seems to be disproportionately popular but I suspect that this is not what the searchers had in mind.

This explains why I get a pretty significant number of views per day even during periods when I'm fairly quiet... but get hardly any engagement (ie, comments or favourites).

Taken in: UK / England / Hillingdon / Heathrow (show map)

Taken on: September 9, 2019

Tags:

United Kingdom

England

Heathrow Airport

Qantas

#QantasSucks

A380

Airport

Airport Lounge « less

Sets appears in: • 2019 Day 02, London, England, Mon 09 Sep 2019

Camera: samsung SM-T515, f/1.9, 1/50 sec, 2.9mm, ISO 64 (more info) (hide info)

Camera:	samsung SM-T515
Aperture:	f/1.9
Exposure Time:	0.02 sec (1/50)
Focal Length:	2.9mm
ISO:	64
Exposure Bias:	0 EV
Flash:	No Flash
Exposure Program:	Program AE
Exposure Mode:	Auto
Metering Mode:	Center-weighted average
White Balance:	Auto
Color Space:	sRGB
Software:	T515XXU1ASCI
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