QANTAS began flying to and from Dallas / Fort Worth International Airport just a few weeks ago and they’ve already experienced a somewhat unusual diversion.  QANTAS Flight QF8 flying from DFW to Brisbane, Australia diverted to Noumea, an island in the South Pacific, to take on additional fuel.  The diversion caused the flight to be late by 2 hours and, no doubt, a bit unprofitable.

There have also been stories of baggage being left behind to reduce weight on these flight.  The flight between DFW and Australia is arguably the longest possible on the Boeing 747-400ER.  QANTAS is the only airline to fly the -400ER and the nominal max range with maximum payload on this aircraft is 7670 nautical miles.  The shortest distance between DFW and Brisbane is 8300 nautical miles.

This means the QANTAS aircraft is already flying payload restricted to achieve the route distance so it is quite possible that some baggage is getting loaded.  Ironically, the 777-200LR could probably fly the same number of people on the same route with unrestricted payload.  This was an aircraft that QANTAS found unsuitable for purchase.

Future QANTAS 787 aircraft will be capable of flying that route and I would expect that that will be one of the first routes to see the 787 although the -8 versions will be barely capable of the flight to Brisbane as well.

QANTAS is smart and I would expect that if this becomes a trend, they’ll re-think the route or look for other equipment to put on it.   If the load factors remain consistently strong, they may well choose to put an A-380 on that route as well.  Much of this new route depends upon how much American Airlines can feed traffic to it and I suspect they can feed quite a bit. 

The thing is, the last thing they want is this flight developing a reputation for taking even longer due to diversions.

Filed under: Airline News by ajax