CORRECTION: The last planes were actually registered VRHHE and VRHHJ. I mixed up the Australian registration format with HK's old one.

I was too busy with other stuff to come up with a proper 400 subs special, so here's a return to making FHs to make up for it ;)

Fleet Histories is a picture presentation series that takes a look at the yearbyyear service of aircraft fleets and the disposition of retired airframes, with fleets from all sorts of operators featured. This was mainly inspired by the work of elmauriplatense, Ibirdball, and Scaring Crab.

Despite not getting factoryfresh 707s of their own during the golden years of the Jet Age, Cathay Pacific managed to get a fleet of them from Northwest Orient when the latter was in the process of phasing out their early jets like the DC8 and 707 in favor of widebody 747s and DC10s. Upon receiving their first aircraft in 1971, the airline had the honor of carrying out the first "widebody cabin" conversion for the 707, which was a modification for late 727s and early 737s that involved replacing the old baggage racks in the cabin with overhead bins in a style similar to the 747's, hence the "widebody cabin" nickname. These modified airframes greatly suited Cathay Pacific's shorthaul and multistop routes at a time when they couldn't afford the longhaul widebodies they were to have in the coming years, and even with the introduction of the L1011 in 1975 and 747200 in 1979, these "widebody" 707s soldiered on until the early 1980's, at which point they were sold off
to other carriers.

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Image sources: Cathay Pacific Discovery, Wikimedia Commons, Airliners.net, AirHistory.net, Chic Eather, flyteam.jp

Intro music: HOME Resonance
BGM: Stoned Presidents Alpha