Qantas now has five Airbus A380s back in service as grounded aircraft are cleared and new deliveries arrive, and it expects to have seven flying by the end of January.
The carrier is gradually returning its six A380s to service after they were grounded for inspections due to the uncontained failure of a Rolls-Royce Trent 900 engine on a Singapore flight on Nov. 4.
The first two aircraft resumed flying in late November, and a third became operational last week. Also last week, a new A380 was delivered from Airbus. Qantas returned another of the grounded aircraft to service this week – bringing its operational total to five.
This will leave just two of the original six A380s grounded. One is expected to return “in the coming weeks,” a Qantas spokeswoman says. It will be joined by another new delivery that was delayed from December. The remaining grounded aircraft will be the A380 that suffered damage during the uncontained failure. There is no timeline for this aircraft’s return to service.
Qantas’ A380s are not being used on the carrier’s transpacific flights to Los Angeles at the moment, due to concerns about operating at full thrust. The airline is in discussions with Rolls-Royce about when this restriction can be lifted, although no announcement has yet been made regarding these routes.
Meanwhile, Qantas’ latest traffic figures show that its international operations were dampened by the A380 problems. In November, international traffic declined 2.2% year-on-year, with a 1.8% capacity drop. This resulted in load factor decreasing by 0.3 points to 82.7%.
Group-wide statistics were brighter, thanks to domestic and regional operations. Traffic rose 3.3% year-on-year on a 4.9% capacity increase. This resulted in load factor slipping by 1.2 points to 81.1%
No comments:
Post a Comment