Boeing famously uses a 7x7 naming convention for its commercial aircraft dating back to the famous and ground-breaking 707 which was not the first commercial passenger jet, but certainly the one that set the scene for the "jet set" age of the 1960s when it first hit the sky in 1956.

(Let's ignore the fact that while most middle income earners these days could afford an economy seat to London, say, in the 1960s you either had to be well into the upper income bracket or save for a couple of / few years to do the same flight. And the planes were slower. And they allowed smoking. They probably weren't as cramped, though. Even so, the "glamour" of the so called jet setting age was for the few, not the many.)

The narrow bodied, relatively short haul, tri engine 727 followed in 1963. It was a very common sight in the 70s and 80s, but since ending its production run in 1984 it was (relatively) rapidly phased out in favour of quieter, more fuel efficient replacements. Some are owned by wealthy individuals, some are still used for charter work, but only 30-something remain in commercial use (none for passenger work) and only aviation buffs and people with long memories still remember them.

The Boeing 737 narrow bodied, short to medium haul twin jet was introduced in 1967, though they weren't that common in Australia in their early years. But boy howdy, their use has exploded in Australia over the last couple of decades. 11,324 have been built so far, and counting.

The Boeing 747 needs no introduction; the 4 engine "Queen of the Skies" was introduced in 1969 and made travel for the middle and even some lower income people possible by allowing airlines to "cram 'em in" and harvest good revenue per mile figures. Only 1,574 were built, but their presence seemed larger. Most have been retired from passenger work now; Qantas saw off its last one in 2020, for example, though quite a few are still used for cargo.

Then there was the 757 (twin engine narrow body, produced 1981-2004), 767 twin engine wide body (which has also largely moved to "hey, remember them?" status, produced 1981 to now, but now only as cargo or military versions), 777 long range wide body twin jet, produced since 1993, Boeing 787 Dreamliner long range twin engine wide body, produced since 2009, and 797... oh wait, there isn't one yet, but some concept designs have unofficially used that name.

So... why no 717 in the '60s? APPARENTLY it's because 717 was the internal designation for the KC-135, the military airborne refuelling tanker aircraft which was based on the 707. It's still in use, showing what a good basic design the 707 was.

So why is this relatively modern aircraft carrying the 717 badge? You need to know the history of the Douglas Aircraft Corporation.

In the 1930s they developed the DC-3 twin piston engined airliner, which morphed into the C-47/Dakota transport plane which formed the backbone of Allied air transport in World War II. If you've seen a World War II movie, odds are you've seen a DC-3/Dakota.

They produced a succession of less famous models, including the DC-4 quad piston engined propeller driven airliner (also used as the military C-54), 1942 to 1947, the DC-5 (mostly cancelled because of the war), DC-6 quad piston engined propeller driven airliner which competed with the more famous Lockheed Constellation in the post-war period (1946-1958), the DC-7 which was essentially an upgraded DC-6 that was killed by the jet age, the narrow bodied, long range DC-8 quad jet which competed (not entirely successfully) against the 707 (556 built vs 865 for the 707), and finally... the DC-9, a narrow body, 5 abreast short to medium range airliner with 2 jets fitted on either side of the tail. The DC-9 was a generally well regarded and successful aircraft, with 976 being built between 1965 and 1982.

You're looking at its great grandson.

In 1967 the (by then) mostly commercial Douglas Aircraft company merged with the (then) mostly military McDonnell Aircraft Corporation to form McDonnell Douglas. The DC-9 design was developed and extended, and acquired the new merged company name of MD-80 since it was intended to enter service in the 1980s. 1,191 were produced between 1979 and 1999. McDonnell Douglas knew a good thing when they saw it and developed a stretched version called the MD-90 which was not QUITE as successful, selling only 116 in its 1993-2000 production run. It did however lead to the MD-95 (a shorter derivative of the MD-80) which, as you would expect, was intended to enter service in the late 90s. But then in August 1997 McDonnell Douglas merged with (cough, were taken over by, effectively) Boeing. The same thing that happened to the former "DC-" names happened to the "MD-" ones and the MD-95 was now the Boeing... what? Boeing didn't want to expend one of its high 7x7 numbers (when it had only one left anyway) on what was a great but aging design, so they rummaged through the archives of history and voila, the Boeing 717 was born. 156 were built in its production run from 1998 to 2006. QantasLink, the regional branch of Qantas, has 20 of them with 18 active, and has sold off 3 in the past. Unusually for Qantas, some are second hand.

This one, VH-YQX, a 717-2K9 model, for example, started off life with Olympic Aviation in Greece in December 1999. It spent some time with Spanair (Spain, 2007) before moving to Blue 1 (Finland, 2010), before making its way to QantasLink in February 2017. The aircraft name is "Bouddi National Park", which... doesn't exactly roll off the tongue.

The 717 carries up to 134 passengers and has a range of 2,060 nautical miles (3,820km) which is IN THEORY enough to even reach Perth on the other side of the country but I suspect that it probably isn't with a full passenger load. However it's plenty to shuttle around the east coast. In this case, VH-YQX is bound for Canberra as flight QF1503.