Qantas Airbus A380 Replacement Talks Advance Around 20 Twinjets
Qantas airbus a380 replacement talks are centered on around 20 Airbus A350 or Boeing 787 widebody twinjets as the airline plans for life after its Airbus A380s. The carrier’s remaining superjumbos are aging, and the decision will shape which aircraft keep its longest routes moving into the 2030s.
Qantas and 20 twinjets
10 Airbus A380s remain in Qantas’s fleet after the airline retired 2 of the 12 it once had at its disposal. Those aircraft are 16.7 years old on average, and Qantas is planning to begin phasing them out in the early 2030s.
Around 20 aircraft is the size now under discussion with Airbus and Boeing, according to industry sources cited in the report. The Airbus A350 and Boeing 787 Dreamliner have emerged as the frontrunners, giving Qantas two wide-body options for a fleet move that would reach into the 2032 financial year.
Airbus A350 and Boeing 787
24 Airbus A350 family aircraft are already on order at Qantas, but all 24 are A350-1000s tied to other plans. 12 are ultra-long-range A350-1000ULR models for Project Sunrise nonstop flights from Europe and the US East Coast to Sydney and Melbourne, while the other 12 standard A350-1000s are earmarked to replace Airbus A330 family twinjets, not the A380 fleet.
The first A350-1000ULR took to the skies for the first time on a test flight out of Toulouse earlier this week. That leaves the A380 replacement question separate from the aircraft already in the pipeline, and it narrows the practical debate to whether Qantas leans further toward Airbus or turns to Boeing for the next batch of long-haul jets.
Qantas fleet planning
Qantas said it currently has no updates or orders to announce. The airline added: “We’re in regular contact with aircraft manufacturers as part of our ongoing fleet planning and always update the market when we have something to announce.”
Only a select handful of routes still see the A380, where premium demand is high enough to justify the jet’s economics and Qantas’s relatively small sub-fleet size. If the airline signs for around 20 wide-body twinjets, the order would not just replace retiring superjumbos; it would also set the pace for how Qantas manages the rest of its long-haul fleet as the early-2030s phaseout approaches.
