The title refers to a flight that Tintin and his friends fail to catch, as they become embroiled in their arch-nemesis Rastapopoulos' plot to kidnap an eccentric millionaire from a supersonic business jet on a Sondonesian island.

Although noted for its highly-detailed artwork, critical reception of Flight 714 to Sydney has been mixed to negative, with its narrative being criticised by commentators for the farcical portrayal of its antagonists, the nescience of its protagonists, and for leaving its central mystery unresolved.

During a refueling stop at Kemajoran Airport, Jakarta en route to an international space exploration conference in Sydney, Australia (as guests of honor for being the first men on the Moon), Tintin, his dog Snowy, and their friends Captain Haddock and Professor Calculus chance upon their old acquaintance Skut (introduced in The Red Sea Sharks).

Carreidas' secretary Spalding, Boehm, and Colombani hijack the plane and bring it to the (fictional) deserted volcanic island of Pulau-pulau Bompa, situated in the Celebes Sea, where the aircraft makes a rough landing on a makeshift runway.

Under the serum's influence, Carreidas becomes eager to confide his life of greed, perfidy, and theft, revealing every detail thereof except the actual account number.

Furious, Rastapopoulos strikes at Krollspell, who is still holding the truth serum syringe, and is accidentally injected, whereupon he too boasts of past crimes until he and Carreidas quarrel over which of them is the most evil.

In the process, Rastapopoulos reveals that nearly all of the men he recruited, including Spalding, the aircraft pilots, the Sondonesians and Krollspell himself, are marked to be eliminated after he gets the account number.

After a run-in with Allan, the pilots, and the Sondonesians, Tintin, led by a telepathic voice, guides the other protagonists to a cave, where they discover a temple hidden inside the island's volcano, guarded by an ancient statue resembling a modern astronaut.

An earthquake and explosion set off by Rastapopoulos and his men triggers a volcanic eruption; Tintin and his party reach relative safety in the volcano's crater.

Kanrokitoff spots the rubber dinghy and exchanges Tintin and his companions (except Krollspell, who is returned to his clinic) for Allan, Spalding, Rastapopoulos, and the treacherous pilots, who are whisked away in the saucer to an unknown fate.

[11] The television presenter who interviews the protagonists at the end of the story was visually modelled on the Tintin fan Jean Tauré, who had written to Hergé asking if he could be depicted in the series shaking Haddock's hand.

[5] In his interviews with Numa Sadoul, Hergé noted that he was consciously shifting the nature of the villains in the book, relating that "during the story, I realised that when all was said and done Rastapopoulos and Allan were pathetic figures.

Look at the discussion between him and Rastapopoulos when, under the influence of the truth serum, they both boast of their worst misdeeds[…] A good example for small children: the rich and respected man, who gives a lot to charity, and the bandit in the same boat!

[14] He was thus portrayed as a former doctor in one of the Nazi extermination camps—perhaps based partly on Josef Mengele—who had fled Europe after the Second World War and settled in New Delhi, where he established his medical clinic.

[20] Leloup, a technical artist and aviation expert, had drawn the Moon rocket, the de Havilland Mosquito in The Red Sea Sharks (1958), and all aircraft in the recently redrawn The Black Island (1966).

[22] A "meticulous design of the revolutionary Carreidas 160 jet" was prepared, according to entertainment producer and author Harry Thompson, "a fully working aircraft with technical plans drawn up by Roger Leloup".

[29] Among the alterations made to the story by translators Leslie-Lonsdale Cooper and Michael Turner were shifting Carreidas' birth from 1899 to 1906, and changing the location of Krollspell's medical clinic from New Delhi to Cairo.

[14] Hergé biographer Benoît Peeters noted that Flight 714 to Sydney "continues the debunking process" of the most recent books, with the villains becoming "objects of parody".

He thought that in doing so, Hergé was "trying to make his world more subtle by eliminating the certainties on which it had been built" and in doing so was "attacking the very foundations he had created", and that this "self-destructive tendency" became more fully "explicit" in the subsequent instalment, Tintin and the Picaros.

[33] Thompson thought that "artistically, the book is his greatest achievement", demonstrating a "cinematic ingenuity of his composition", particularly in its scenes inside the temple and of the volcanic eruption.

[34] The literary critic Tom McCarthy believed that Flight 714 to Sydney exhibited a number of themes that recurred throughout the Adventures of Tintin more widely.

In his psychoanalytical study of The Adventures of Tintin, the literary critic Jean-Marie Apostolidès expressed the view that the philosophical concept of "the void" appeared repeatedly in Flight 714 to Sydney,[40] referring to the existence of World War II bunkers and the underground temple as examples.

[42] He compares the character of Carreidas with that of Baxter from the moon adventure, yet notes that the former is "craftier, more childish and inhumane, less interested in research itself than in technological applications", working for profit rather than the good of humanity.

[42] Turning his attention to comparisons with Prisoners of the Sun, he highlights that both stories feature ancient temples, "weird animals", and dramatic natural phenomena,[44] as well as the prominent inclusion of amnesia.