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.