Founded in 1920, Qantas is one of the oldest airlines in the world. The red kangaroo on the tail and the cheery hello when you step aboard at Heathrow can lift the mood of even the most jaded Aussie. Like Pan Am, Singapore Airlines, and British Airways, the airline is a symbol of its home nation – the national flag carrier.
How did Qantas become the Australian flag carrier? There’s a pretty prosaic answer to that. It was nationalised by the Curtin Labor Government in 1947 and remained so until 1995 when it was privatised. Most Australians have always had a financial interest in Qantas, whether as a taxpayer or a shareholder.
But there is a more interesting backstory to why Qantas is a part of Australia’s psyche.
The founding of Qantas
The airline was founded in outback Queensland in the wake of World War I. At the time, aviation was in its infancy but Australians are never shy about jumping on board a trend and early aviation pioneers like Lawrence Hargrave and Charles Kingsford Smith were making significant contributions to the field from down under.
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The distances are vast in outback Queensland and the roads were, and still can be, dusty and frequently impassable. Back in 1920, it would take days to get between isolated towns. A couple of blokes, namely Paul McGuiness and Hudson Fysh, thought it would be a good idea to start an air taxi and charter service out of Winton, Queensland.
Possibly the bright idea came about after a Sunday afternoon sinking a few too many drinks.
They called the airline the Queensland and Northern Territory Aerial Service (QANTAS).
If you are at all familiar with Winton, Queensland, even now, it’s not really the place to inspire confidence in a business venture.
But aviation was a novelty and they got some passengers. Then they got a mail run.
In 1922, they began their first scheduled passenger service – between Cloncurry and Charleville (both railhead towns – you can still take 20 odd hours to chug between Charleville and Brisbane on the Westlander should you so desire).
From these very humble and dusty origins, Qantas grew into what it is today.
National myth-making and Qantas
You’ve also got to appreciate that the average Australian likes to think of himself or herself as the kind of person who doesn’t mind a bit of dust between their toes and doing some hard yards out bush.
Of course, this is rubbish. Your average Aussie these days hates flies, likes pinot, uses gender-neutral language, definitely doesn’t go bush, and probably thinks Cloncurry is a kind of organic plum found at Harris Farm Markets.
I can say this because I am one. And this early Qantas backstory perfectly suits Australia’s taste for adventurous and dusty national myth-making. We’re good at it.
Qantas markets the myth
That was one hundred years ago. Credit to Qantas for surviving and prospering and taking the company from that dusty outback airstrip to airports around the world.
Australians are now a well-travelled bunch. You trip over them in London tube stations and they seem to have taken over every second coffee bar in New York. Good luck Chicago. But to get out of here, you’ve got to fly, and for a long time, there was a significant cultural imperative to do a big trip overseas before getting married and settling down. Travelling is in the national DNA.
Qantas played a big part in that process. They were the airline you flew out on – often your first flight, certainly your first overseas flight. The airline facilitated that adventure and people of a certain age have long associated the Qantas with that first big adventure.
Then, six or twelve months later, when you were broke and busted out, the cheery Flight Attendant would be at the door of a Qantas jet to bring you back home.
Sometimes you’d even get the Peter Allen song prior to departure.
Finally
Qantas has succeeded as a national flag carrier not only because of ownership but because Australian’s have willingly adopted it into their national consciousness for a century. And Qantas has astutely utilised this.
Today, even when the airline does something supremely annoying, like cancelling a flight or Jetstar-tuting a route, most Australians will stick with the airline. It kind of annoys me, but then again I keep suggesting Qantas story ideas to Simple Flying so I am probably captured too.
And I’m flying them next week – three times.
https://simpleflying.com/qantas-australian-flag-carrier/
2019-07-29 03:17:39Z
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