The Australian airline Qantas was initially planning to phase out and retire their fleet of Boeing 747-400 ER aircraft in February 2021, however, due to the ongoing crisis, the airline decided to retire the aircraft now.

The final revenue flight was Qantas QF28 from Santiago, Chile to Sydney, Australia on March 29th, 2020.  The flight was operated by tail number VH-OEE.

Prior to this final flight, the airline performed a “fly by” over Sydney Harbor on Thursday, March 26th, 2020 to salute the many years of service by the Boeing 747 fleet.

Qantas had previously retired their standard (Non-ER) Boeing 747-400 fleet in October of 2019.

Qantas has been operating the Boeing 747 in their fleet since July 30th, 1971.  The first routing the aircraft flew was from Sydney to Melbourne to Singapore.

During the history of Qantas, the airline has operated a number of variants of the Boeing 747.  These include the Boeing 747-200B, 747SP, 747 Combi, 747-300, 747-400, and 747-400 ER.

The reason for the popularity of the Boeing 747 in the Qantas fleet is due to the isolated location of Australia and the need for a long range aircraft to successfully reach foreign destinations without the need for an intermediate stop en-route.