WHBM

When CDG opened in 1974 there was plenty of runway capacity but a shortage of terminal space. Only the circular Terminal 1 was provided at first, and only flights which had run from the nearby Le Bourget transferred over, none of Air France who at that time were concentrated at Orly. Only when the much larger T2 on the other side of the airport was progressively built did the transfer start.

We did a university study trip to Paris about 18 months after it opened, and as it was the mega-project of the country at the time I wanted to see it. It was a spare Saturday in the trip and only one other of my class colleagues was interested enough to join me. We went to the east end of Metro Line 3 at Gallieni from where there was a city RATP bus nonstop to CDG, all covered by our inner Paris Metro tickets. The bus was a typical older era simplistic dark green comfortless Paris city bus, designed with low gearing for the city cobbled streets, which was driven absolutely flat out (so maybe 50mph) on the Autoroute that ran from Gallieni through open country out to the airport, taking about 30 minutes, with the driver taking both hands off the wheel at intervals to relight his Gauloise. About half a dozen passengers. The vibration and noise were worse than a 1950s piston airliner. We speculated on whether our teeth would be shaken out before the end, or if the bus windows would fall out first.

In the terminal it seemed pretty deserted, and an example of the bizarre 1970s French ultra-modernist concrete architecture we had seen the previous day in the Pompidou Centre, counter-intuitive for finding your way and with oddball escalators all around thrumming away to no effect. There was zero visibility of any aircraft. I was hoping to see one of UTA, unknown in other European countries (the first UTA I ever saw, was a few years later at LAX heading for Tahiti). They had transferred from Le Bourget.

So there we go. Meanwhile, here in London today's aviation story has been the nonstop Qantas B787 flight from Heathrow to Sydney. Didn't see it, but I did see the last nonstop, which was 30 years ago in 1989 when they took delivery of their first 747-400 and did the same thing, by all accounts rather more marginal than today's. It was climbing pretty gently on minimal power, and beat up our old office some miles from Heathrow. Unexpectedly I heard it coming, suddenly clicked in, and went out into the car park to see it go. These long-haul Qantas flights being trialled (they did another JFK to Sydney) are termed "Project Sunrise" honouring a prior Qantas operation called the "Double Sunrise".

Bonus question : What was the "Double Sunrise", which aircraft, and which two airports did it link ?