Summary
- Severe weather in Sydney caused Qantas to consolidate multiple Boeing 737 flights onto an Airbus A380.
- Qantas’ revolutionary solution involved using a superjumbo on the Melbourne – Sydney route.
- Passengers impacted by the operational swap saw a pleasant surprise upgrade because the A380 offers a more premium-heavy layout than the same old Boeing 737.
The Australian domestic corridor between Melbourne Airport (MEL) and Sydney Kingsford Smith (SYD), is a busy one, with Qantas facing competition from the likes of Jetstar, Rex, and Virgin Australia. The Australian flag carrier typically deploys Boeing 737s on this corridor, but adversarial weather prompted an unlikely swap.
Significant disruption on a busy route
In response to an announcement released by Qantas earlier, severe storms were forecast to hit Sydney today. Given the risks that adversarial weather can pose to the operations of economic aircraft, this prompted Airservices Australia to limit air traffic out and in of the Harbour City. In response to data from FlightAware, some 53% of exits and 36% of arrivals have faced delays today because of this of the restrictions.
Scheduling data made available by Cirium, an aviation analytics company, shows that Qantas had initially planned to operate a whopping 36 flights between Melbourne and Sydney today. With each of those departures using 174-seat Boeing 737-800s, these services would have offered a complete of 6,264 seats and a couple of,749,896 available seat miles. Nonetheless, the weather situation has impacted the schedule.
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Photo: Vidit Luthra | Shutterstock
Qantas hailed the resilience of its staff, stating that “.” Passengers also had the choice to rebook, subject to availability.
A relatively different configuration
In response to data from aeroLOPA, the Boeing 737-800s that Qantas often flies on the route from Melbourne to Sydney have 162 economy and 12 business class seats onboard. Nonetheless, the A380 has a rather more premium-heavy layout, with 14 firstclass, 70 business, 60 premium economy, and 341 economy seats. As such, dozens of passengers can have had a pleasant surprise upgrade on the flight!
What do you make of this aircraft change? Have you ever ever seen such an operational swap? Tell us your thoughts and experiences within the comments!