26 AUSTRALIAN AVIATION DECEMBER 2017
told the 1,500 Qantas staff, industry
guests and media who were inside the
airline’s Hangar 96 at Sydney Airport
on October 20.
“We can look so much forward to
our second century stronger and more
determined to be a world leader than
we have ever been.”
VH-ZNA had departed Paine Field,
Everett on the morning of Tuesday
October 17, with Qantas chief technical
pilot Captain Alex Passerini, manager
787-9 introduction Captain Lisa Norman
and project pilot – training First Officer
Jim Eaglen on the flightdeck, landing in
Honolulu five hours later.
The aircraft then spent the night
in Honolulu before departing on the
second leg of the journey to Australia
just before midnight (local time) on
Wednesday, touching down in a very
wet Sydney 10 hours later.
VH-ZNA will be quickly followed
by the next seven aircraft over the next
12 months through to November 2018.
The second 787-9 is set for delivery to
the airline in early December (allowing
Qantas to begin Melbourne-LA flights),
and it will be followed by aircraft three
in January and aircraft four in mid-
March, then Qantas International chief
executive Gareth Evans confirmed
ahead of VH-ZNA’s formal handover.
Those four aircraft will allow
Qantas to launch its Perth-London
flights, pioneering nonstop commercial
airline services between Australia and
Europe for the first time.
“The four aircraft are actually
patterned together so that the aircraft
run Los Angeles-Melbourne-Perth-
London in a sort of smile pattern,”
Evans told media at Boeing’s Everett
plant on October 15.
“It starts to help us build a western
hub, and potentially we can add
additional services to Europe through
that hub in the future, potentially a
Brisbane-Perth-Paris or a Sydney-
Perth-Paris, building a hub and hitting
those key European hubs directly.”
But Qantas has already announced
that its next four 787s will be based in
Brisbane, two of which will be used
to replace Boeing 747-400s on the
airline’s current Brisbane-LA-New
York rotation. That will then leave the
remaining two aircraft for future route
opportunities.
“The range capability that this
technology delivers will enable us to hit
new destinations, potentially things like
Brisbane-Chicago,” Evans said.
“This new technology, and the
technology potentially to come, will
revolutionise our international network.
These are aircraft that are made for
Qantas and we can do unique things
with these aircraft that other airlines,
because of their geography, perhaps
will not, or don’t need to.
“Because of their size, these
aircraft are going to be great for our
Asian network as well – point-to-point
travel into Asia, 236 seats so there’s
great opportunity and potential going
forward for us to use this wonderfully
flexible and efficient aircraft right
around our network.”
And future 787 orders could be for
the largest 787-10, or, probably less
likely, the shorter 787-8, joining the
11 -8s that are already in service with
Jetstar.
“This is a flexible order stream, so
with appropriate notice we could move
from a -9 to an -8 to a -10 and so it’s
a great level of flexibility that we have
to manage our fleet plan together with
Boeing,” Evans said.In all the first eight 787s will allow
Qantas to replace its five oldest 747s.
Beyond that Qantas holds options
and purchase rights on a further 45
787s, but Joyce says a decision on
exercising some of those options
won’t be taken until some point next
year after seeing how the first aircraft
perform in service.
“There will be a gap, we do need to
bed down the [787] operation, make
sure that everything is working,” Joyce
said. “We do have flexibility with
Boeing and there is availability [of
delivery slots] at the end of 2019, 2020
onwards.”
It’s a relatively conservative
approach to introducing the aircraft into
service, but nonetheless it seems likely
the ultimate Qantas fleet will end up as
much larger than eight units.
Boeing’s latest Current Market
Outlook forecasts airlines in Oceania
(Australia and New Zealand) will
require 150 medium-categoryThese are
aircraft that
are made for
Qantas.
GARETH EVANS