Speeches

Today I was also pleased to announce that next year we will be recruiting 100 new engineering apprentices, taking our engineering apprentice numbers to 386, as part of Australia’s largest civil aviation apprentice program. And I’m pleased to mention this commitment this evening, because Reg Ansett himself was a great supporter of young people in aviation. I understand at one stage he personally provided 15 scholarships each year to allow young men to fulfil their dream of becoming a pilot.

Qantas CEO Alan Joyce addressed the Australia Pacific Aviation Outlook Summit on Wednesday 5 August 2009.

Australian travellers joined the jet-set era 50 years ago when Qantas flight EM774 departed Sydney Airport at 3.35pm on 29 July 1959, bound for Nadi, Honolulu and San Francisco. The sleek, silver and white fuselage of the Boeing 707 jet created history as Qantas became the first airline in the world to operate commercial passenger jet services across the Pacific. Qantas also was the first airline based outside the USA to operate the new passenger jet.

Address by Alan Joyce, Qantas Chief Executive Officer
The Committee for Economic Development of Australia
Langham Hotel, Southbank, Melbourne
27 May 2009

About a hundred years ago something special happened in Australia. In a nation of just four million people, at the far end of the world, Australia produced a generation of global aviation pioneers.