Australia’s Qantas Airways is to take delivery of its first Airbus A380 on 19 September, when it will become the third airline to have the new aircraft type in its fleet.
The Oneworld alliance carrier says in a statement that it will “welcome its first A380 aircraft into the Qantas fleet at a ceremony at Airbus’ Toulouse factory and fly it via Singapore to Sydney, where it will land on Sunday morning, 21 September”.
It had already announced that it would put its first A380 into service on 20 October, between Melbourne and Los Angeles, but it had not revealed a firm delivery date.
Qantas has 20 A380s on order, three of which will be delivered by the end of 2008.
It will be the third airline to operate the A380. Singapore Airlines has been operating the ultra-large aircraft since October and Emirates put its first into service last week.
Qantas says that in addition to Melbourne-Los Angeles, it will initially be using the A380 for Sydney-Los Angeles services. From January it will also use the A380 for some of its services between Sydney and Singapore as well as between Singapore and London.
See hundreds of images of the Airbus A380 on AirSpace ...Source: FlightGlobal.com
