Aviation, Published 15 May 2026
Throwback to Aviation History: Australia’s First International Passenger Flight!
On 17 April 1935, Qantas launched Australia’s first scheduled international passenger service - departing from Archerfield Aerodrome in Brisbane and heading for Singapore.
The service was operated by a de Havilland DH.86 Express, a four-engine biplane airliner designed for long-distance routes. Just two paying passengers were aboard the inaugural flight.
The journey took around three and a half days, with 16 stops along the route. Night flying was still very limited at the time, so passengers travelled during daylight hours and stopped overnight at remote locations along the way. The route crossed Australia, the Timor Sea, and the Dutch East Indies (modern-day Indonesia).
The Brisbane–Singapore service formed part of the early air link connecting with Imperial Airways services to Europe - helping create what would later become known as the “Kangaroo Route.” Travel times that once took weeks by sea were reduced to just days by air during the height of the Great Depression.
From those pioneering beginnings at Archerfield to today’s non-stop flights to Singapore in under eight hours, Australian aviation has come a remarkable long way.
Who else loves old-school aviation history? Drop a below if you’d take that 1935 adventure!
A note on our visuals: To help bring this story to life, we’ve used computer-generated illustrations inspired by and carefully modeled on 1936 public domain photographic archives. These images are created solely for educational and historical storytelling purposes and are shared on a strictly non-commercial basis.
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