Qantas A380 reliability issues creeping up again?

[serfty]

AFFer, @Bundy Bear , is on this flight. He posted on FB that Qf was sending him to a hotel for the night.

"Today's" QF11 has been cancelled. @Bundy Bear has lost their shadow ...

 

[FlyingKangaroo]

"Today's" QF11 has been cancelled. @Bundy Bear has lost their shadow ...

Good lord. I am already resigning myself to roulette for QF 11 next month. I got lucky in July after it had a rough June, but I now also have to book another trip later this month for an important work meeting. Sad to say but I'll be booking away from Qantas simply because of this. I'm certain I'm not the only one. This is what reputation damage caused by chronically poor operational reliability looks like in practice. A pity.

 

[Himeno]

They have also wetleased finnair for SIN and BKK

They leased the AY aircraft for SYD-BKK and SYD-SIN because they converted 2 A330s to freighters during covid, then didn't have enough aircraft to operate what they wanted to once demand returned.

 

[Melburnian1]

The oldest 332 is 22, youngest 12, oldest 380 is 16, youngest 12 and that's with the Covid downtime. All the 787s are under 7.

VH-OJA, the 747 at HARS was 26 when she was finally retired, and plenty of the 747s flew towards the mid-20s.

The narrow body mainline domestic fleet is probably the oldest it has been (oldest 738 22, but youngest 9) but that's just a function of the lump of deliveries post Ansetts collapse, and that's going to change pretty quickly as 321XLRs start arriving from 2025 (think April 2025 for the first)

A good attempt at "putting lipstick on...", but although not a strictly 'apples for apples' comparison as some foreign airlines have zero or not much of a domestic operation, there's no getting away from how QFd and QFi have fleets that are older than those of many competitors.

It also begs the question why QFi has so many problems with its A380s (and B789s) when by and large, at least when the aircraft visit Australia, foreign airlines seem to have fewer difficulties.

 

[downloadingdata]

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The oldest 332 is 22, youngest 12, oldest 380 is 16, youngest 12 and that's with the Covid downtime. All the 787s are under 7.

VH-OJA, the 747 at HARS was 26 when she was finally retired, and plenty of the 747s flew towards the mid-20s.

The narrow body mainline domestic fleet is probably the oldest it has been (oldest 738 22, but youngest 9) but that's just a function of the lump of deliveries post Ansetts collapse, and that's going to change pretty quickly as 321XLRs start arriving from 2025 (think April 2025 for the first)

Ah my bad, my question was more around average fleet age. I think by the time the jumbos retired, the a330s and a380s would have been rather young? There was probably a bit more slack in the fleet given the lesser maintenance requirements?

 

[moa999]

my question was more around average fleet age

My point was average is a bad measurement.

But Qantas has kept aircraft for longer in the past. And versus some airlines based in other countries the reason partially comes down to tax treatment on aircraft depreciation.

In the 2000s Dixon used to love using a flat average as it was going down - but that was because Qantas was buying lots of (relatively) cheap 737s, whilst the more expensive 767s and 747s were ageing.

The last 10-15yrs has seen the reverse issue, with Covid, where aircraft production also mostly halted, not helping.

Possibly some form of capacity adjusted average might be more meaningful.
I'd think today Qantas mainline might be a bit higher than its long-term average but not drastically so.