Qantas Adding Daily A380 Flights To Dallas

Intro

Being based in North America as an Avgeek means that you get the opportunity to encounter a wide variety of airlines and aircraft. Well, whether or not you are flying into San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York, Toronto, Chicago (and now Dallas), you will soon come across a daily A380, with Qantas opting to add service to Fort Worth.

The Details

During the summer in the United States, the Australian-based flag carrier is set to operate daily service between Sydney and Dallas utilizing a Boeing 787-9. However, they clearly see market potential here, as the carrier has decided to upgrade this service to an A380 on a 4x weekly basis as of August 11th, with the other 3 days still operated by a Dreamliner.

To make matters better, as of January, this service has been upgraded to a daily A380 flight between the two cities.

The A380 is a huge upgrade in terms of capacity, and for those who are in love with flying. Qantas has configured their whales with 14 First Class seats, 70 Business Class seats, 60 Premium Economy seats, and 341 Economy seats.

Qantas A380

The route will be operated with the following schedule from January-April (and possibly longer):

QF7: Sydney-Dallas Fort Worth, departing at 2:20 pm and arriving at 12:30 pm

QF8: Dallas Fort Worth-Sydney, departing at 8:30 pm and arriving at 6:55 am (+2 days)

My Thoughts

Firstly, this addition by Qantas makes a lot of sense from an American standpoint, primarily due to the fact that Americans tend to vacation down under during the colder months in the USA. With the flight being marketed by American Airlines as well, I am sure this route is going to do very well.

Secondly, I am not seeing much in terms of award space. Qantas has long been a bit of a struggle to book award seats on, and with cash fares so high (2000 RT for Y), this is likely the more feasible way that people book tickets. On paper, you have 14 F seats, and 70 J, but that doesn't necessarily mean more award seats...

Overall, though, it's so cool to see yet another A380 fly to the USA, especially when Global Airlines just landed in JFK today.

Final Thoughts

Since the pandemic hit back in March 2020, plenty of airlines have phased out their A380s. However, Qantas has kept them around and will now be going all in on Dallas-Fort Worth, by offering daily service in the winter months (northern hemisphere) between the two cities. Exciting!