1970s Australia Qantas Boeing 707 Jet Airliner Aviation Airline Vintage Postcard

Title
1970s Australia Qantas Boeing 707 Jet Airliner Aviation Airline Vintage Postcard

Front
A colour air-to-air photograph of a Qantas Boeing 707 jet airliner in flight, seen from slightly above on the port side, cruising above a broad field of white cumulus cloud.

The aircraft has a long slender swept-wing fuselage finished in white on the upper surfaces and bare polished metal below, divided by a broad red-orange cheatline running the full length of the fuselage along the window line. Two rows of small square cabin windows run along the fuselage sides, with emergency exit hatches marked at intervals along the upper line. The flight deck windows and radome are visible at the nose.

The airline titles are painted in red on the upper forward fuselage, reading:

“AUSTRALIA QANTAS”

with “QANTAS” in the larger stylised block lettering of the period.

The tall swept fin and rudder are painted bright red and carry the airline’s white flying kangaroo emblem. The swept tailplane extends to either side, its upper surface visible.

Four podded turbojet or turbofan engines hang beneath the wings on pylons, two visible on the near wing with dark thrust reverser bands around their nacelles, and the outboard pair on the far wing partly hidden. The wings are strongly swept with flap track fairings along the trailing edges, and the port wing carries small titles on its upper surface. The undercarriage is retracted.

Below and behind, the cloud layer forms a dense white and blue-grey field of cumulus tops extending to a hazy horizon, with the sky brightening toward the top of the frame. The card has no white border and a semi-glossy photographic surface. There is creasing at the lower left, edge and corner wear, and scattered spotting on the image.

Back
Printed in black at upper centre:

“POST CARD”

A ruled square stamp box is printed at the upper right, and a vertical black dividing rule separates the message and address panels.

Printed in black at lower left:

“QANTAS BOEING 707
Cruises at 890 km/h (550 mph)
Carries 140 to 163 passengers and 7 t (7 tons) of cargo
Wingspan 44.43 m (145′ 9″)
Overall Length 46.58 m (152′ 11″)”

Printed in small type at the lower right:

“Printed in Australia”

There is no stamp, postmark, address or handwritten sender’s message; the card is unused and unposted. The reverse shows scattered yellow-brown staining across the lower portion, together with light corner and edge wear.

Estimated Era
Circa mid to late 1970s. The card is a continental-format chrome issue printed in Australia. The dating rests chiefly on the caption, which gives all figures in metric units with imperial equivalents in brackets, a convention adopted in Australia during and immediately after the metrication programme of the early to middle 1970s. The livery shown, with the red fin carrying the white flying kangaroo and the “AUSTRALIA QANTAS” fuselage titles in the block lettering introduced in the late 1960s, remained in use through the 1970s before the later redesign. Qantas operated the Boeing 707 on international services until the type was retired from the fleet in 1979 as the Boeing 747 took over, placing this card within the final decade of 707 operations.

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