Founded on November 16, 1920 by World War I veterans P.J. "Ginty" McGinness, Sir Fergus McMaster,W. Arthur Baird and Sir Wilmot Hudson Fysh, the Queensland and Northern Territory Aerial Services began service as a small regional company with one Avro 504K biplane. Over the years, Qantas expanded its routes within Australia and provided services like the Australian Aerial Medical Service, which transported "flying doctors" to remote locations in the Outback region. Qantas evolved from being a regional airline to an international air carrier in the 1930s; since then, Australia's flag airline has extended its reach globally with its fleet of Boeing and Airbus airliners.
Airbus, is a division of EADS, a multinational defense-and-aeronautical industrial entity supported by various governments in the European Union and based in France. Originally founded in 1970 as Airbus Industrie to compete with U.S. aerospace companies such as the then-dominant Boeing and McDonnell-Douglas, Airbus manufactures, sells and supports aircraft for both commercial and military purposes, including the world's largest airliner, the A380, as well as the successful A-330 family of twin-engine wide body jets.
The A330 is a twin-engine wide-body aircraft which is a smaller counterpart to the four-engine A340 airliner, sharing some basic design elements and avionics systems to save time and production costs. The A330-300 variant is 208 feet and 11 inches long, 55 feet high and has a wingspan of 197 feet and 10 inches. It can carry nearly 300 passengers in a cabin divided in three seating classes over a maximum distance of 5,850 nautical miles.
Qantas operates 10 Airbus A330-300 airliners, including the aircraft with the identification codes VH-QPE and VH-QPF, which are nearly identical members of the A330-301 subfamily built in 2004. Both jets wear Qantas livery of white fuselage and red tailplane with the airline's stylized kangaroo logo and entered service 10 days apart; VH-QPE, which bears the manufacturer serial number 593, is named Port Lincoln and was delivered on June 28, 2004, while VH-QPF, which was given the serial number 595, was delivered to Qantas on June 18, 2004 and named Esperance.
