Oh, I tried to resist, but...

1. Joh -- it's "at-LAAAAYin-tah" for Atlanta.

2. Then again, for Sydney it's "SINnee"

3. American: "Awww-STRAYel-yuh". Australian: "a-STRY-a" (MUCH shorter word). You should hear Dubya's baseball buddy, interestingly serving as the U.S. Ambassador to Australia, have a go at the word. One wonders if there will be a break for lunch. Oh well, such is pronunciation in "TAY-uck-siss"!

3. Don't forget SAATAS, the South Australia and Territory Air Service. Qantas wasn't alone in forging the norm for acronym naming.

4. The full name of the company is "Qantas Airways Limited", and "Queensland" is nowhere in the name.

5. Americans seem to think we go about spelling Qantas in all uppercase, being somewhat more literal types than your average Commonwealth psyche. It's not true. "Qantas", when typed in promotional material, in advertising, or in newspapers, is always proper case. That said, the company name as a logo is sometimes represented in all uppercase, the most obvious example being on the side of a plane! The word Qantas is not in uppercase however in other cases, such as "The Qantas Club" or "Qantas Frequent Flyer". It's a branding thing, but the proper case usage clearly outranks the uppercase wordmark.

6. Plenty of English words where "u" doesn’t follow the "q" as well. "Qaid" comes to mind.

Cheers,

Glen,
QFAA
Part-time linguist (that stuff you get on pizza).