Qantas Boeing 787s headed for Johannesburg, Tokyo
The jumbo jet looks set to bow out of the Qantas' fleet with little fanfare.

Quelle surprise: Qantas plans to fly its Boeing 787 jets to Tokyo and Johannesburg next year, with the Boeing 747 finally making way for its smaller but more modern counterpart.
While an array of state and national restrictions sparked by the coronavirus pandemic have shifted the near-term focus to domestic travel, airlines continue to mark up their schedules and lay down their plans for when international travel resumes.
Qantas has now pushed out its timetable for the airline industry's "northern summer" period, which spans from late March to late October 2021, and as expected, the Boeing 747 is out of the frame.
Sydney-Johannesburg and Sydney-Tokyo, the last remaining Qantas routes assigned to the iconic jumbo jet, now both belong to the Dreamliner: and for business travellers, the combination of the superior Business Suite and the Boeing 787's more comfortable and jetlag-minimising travel experience can both be chalked up as solid wins.
However, it's important to note that what Qantas has published is effectively its standard pre-coronavirus schedule, and that's going to be very different to the actual timetable of 2021 because travel won't automatically snap back to its 2019 state.
Instead, it will return on an almost route-by-route, country-by-country basis shaped around safety and demand. This could also see some flights restarting at three or four days a week rather than a daily service.
In short: pretty much everything is subject to change.
The last Qantas Boeing 747s depart this month
Qantas' original plan was for its final Boeing 747s to be put out to pasture by the end of 2020, to be replaced by the second tranche of Boeing 787-9s which would bring the Dreamliner fleet up to 14.
The impact of the coronavirus pandemic saw the jumbo jets grounded at the end of March, along with the rest of Qantas' international fleet – and it was clear that the longer the shut-down and the more drawn-out the recovery, the less likely we'd see the Boeing 747s return to the skies or even make a victory lap of Qantas' major Australian airports.
Qantas now has just three Boeing 747s remaining in Australia, and Executive Traveller understands that throughout June these will fly from Sydney to California's Mojave Desert, where many aircraft are being stored during the global aviation downturn, although other aircraft at the infamous 'boneyard' are stripped or scrapped.
Qantas Boeing 787, Sydney to Johannesburg
Shifting from a Boeing 747 to a Boeing 787 has long been on the cards for Johannesburg as well as Santiago, which Qantas last year announced would be upgraded to the Dreamliner for June 2020.
Speaking with Executive Traveller in June 2019, on the sidelines of the International Air Transport Association (IATA) Annual General Meeting in Seoul, Qantas Group CEO Alan Joyce confirmed that the “ETOPS requirements that these (Boeing 787) aircraft are certified to will allow us to do both routes.”
ETOPS refers to the restrictions placed on twin-engined aircraft by aviation regulators, which limit how far commercial flights can venture from a safe landing point on the ground: a cap that's particularly relevant on long over-water flights, and which varies from one aircraft type to the next.
That said, Qantas' Boeing 787s come with 128 fewer seats on board compared to the airline's Boeing 747s, which Joyce views as an opportunity to increase the regularity of its Southern Hemisphere flights.
“It’s a smaller aircraft, the Boeing 787, so it allows you to build up the frequency on those routes. At the moment, we don’t have daily flights all the time on these routes… so for us, South Africa and South America isn’t going to be a problem.”
South Africa and South America were also potential non-stop destinations for Qantas' ambitious Project Sunrise, which has also been put on hold due to the coronavirus.
Qantas Boeing 787, Sydney to Tokyo
Qantas' daily flight between Sydney and Tokyo was another perennially popular route of the Boeing 787, although the introduction of direct Qantas flights to Tokyo from Melbourne and Brisbane steadily chipped away at demand for passengers connecting via Sydney.
Even so, in the pre-coronavirus world, moving to the smaller Boeing 787 could have required that Qantas shift to double-daily flights – although Qantas chief Alan Joyce had previously suggested that a single daily Airbus A380 was also in the running.
“We’d like to go to an A380 (on Sydney-Tokyo), and use the aircraft there,” Joyce told Executive Traveller in mid-2019.
The catch was that Tokyo's Haneda Airport doesn’t allow more than one Airbus A380 to be on the ground at a time. Under the current timetable, the aircraft assigned to Qantas' Sydney-Tokyo route “stays in Tokyo the whole day and then leaves at night, which means no other A380s can be on the ground when it’s there” under the airport’s current policy.
"We need that (policy) changed, and we’re working to figure out how we’d do that," Joyce added.
Qantas freezes its Boeing 787 fleet
As previously reported, Qantas will defer the delivery of its last three Boeing 787-9 aircraft due to arrive by the end of this year, joining other airlines around the world in pushing back on the delivery of new jets until the worst of the coronavirus has passed and the shape of the post-pandemic travel market is clearer.
"It is hard to predict what the demand will look like and recovery is likely to be slow," Joyce has said.
"There's a lot we don't know about life on the other side of the crisis, but our starting assumption has to be that the market won't return to demand levels we had going into the crisis. The market will probably be smaller for some time."
Joyce told Executive Traveller that the airline will launch a sweeping review of its entire international fleet to reshape the airline around post-coronavirus travel demand, because "the Qantas of 2021 and 2022 will not be the Qantas of 2019."
This could include fewer Airbus A380s, with the airline halting its refurbishment plan – only six of the 12 superjumbos have been upgraded with new business class seats and inflight lounges to free up cash in the short term, until it's determined how many A380s will be needed in this uncertain future.
"There is a potential to bring all 12 (A380s) back (into service), but there is a potential to bring less than 12 back," Joyce says of the airline's flagship jets. "That will depend on what the recovery scenario looks like."
Also read: The Qantas Boeing 747 – looking back on a half-century of flying
Air New Zealand - Airpoints
23 May 2013
Total posts 45
It wouldn't be hard to imagine them only keeping the 6 refurb'd A380s and retiring the others. A380 would base in SYD with all long haul flights from Melbourne on the Dreamliner. This could help them launch the long discussed MEL-DFW to help with the decrease in capacity to LAX
31 Mar 2014
Total posts 357
The remaining 747's leaving without a victory lap will be quite sad. Understandable in this situation, but there is so much history about to fly off into the sunset without a fitting goodbye.
Singapore Airlines - KrisFlyer
08 Jun 2018
Total posts 98
Grannular, I would agree it is indeed s hame that the iconic &$7 won't get the farewell it deserves, but as you rightly say in the current situation anyone who imagined it would have been otherwise was a fantasist.
30 May 2014
Total posts 5
I would say these schedules are very loose and will certainly change.
Currently for Northern Summer 2021 schedule dreamliners are rostered on:
MEL-LAX x 1pw
MEL-SFO x 4pw
BNE-LAX x daily
BNE-ORD x 4pw
BNE-SFO x 3pw
SYD-SFO x daily
PER-LHR x daily
SYD-JNB x daily
SYD-HND x daily
SYD-SCL x daily
SYD-HKG x daily
11 dreamliners will not fill this schedule and thats not allowing for potential reduction in A380 fleet.
Even the additional 3 frames now deferred will struggle to fill pre covid schedule unless some shorter 787 routes are substituted with A330.
28 May 2020
Total posts 3
this roster requires roughly 17 Dreamliners. They will only have 14 at that point. Could we see them order 4 more?
30 Jul 2015
Total posts 123
Yeah, I think the A330's will be doing Honolulu, Hong Kong and Tokyo. That frees up 3 Dreamliners for the other routes in this schedule
28 May 2020
Total posts 3
What? Qantas won't have enough Dreamliners for this. Might have to order some more.
Qantas
19 Apr 2012
Total posts 1244
I suspect the A380s will be Syd LAX and maybe Syd DFW. London may go to two 787s via Perth. Chicago and San Francisco may go for now. Then a slow build up over 2021 to 2023. We may yet see the A350-1000s in 2023 to avoid any stopovers anywhere. A330s for all regional flights.
Etihad - Etihad Guest
04 Mar 2018
Total posts 29
787 to JNB, is a big leap of faith. There are some very lonely skies down there near Antarctica. When I have done that flight(s), we were advised the only other aircraft anywhere near us was the QF flight going the other way.
With the 4 engines and the decades long reliability of the 747, I was comfortable. Not so sure I will do that leg again on relatively new twin engined 787, until it has a few more years of reliability under its wings.
Floating in life raft in the Southern Ocean, freezing, in a sea storm is not something I'd enjoy.
23 Jul 2017
Total posts 72
Please, oh please tell me who called the Boeing 787 a "dreamliner". He/she/or it should be taken out and hanged by the thumbs at dawn. Flying in his miserable little air craft is a nightmare, and I've done it in all cabins. For the first time in my long haul travelling life I ended the journey with a heavy case of jet lag, and it happened every other time. Mr Joyce, please travel Perth to London (or return) in seat 54E, then tell me how wonderful and comfortable journey was. "Dreamliner? I think not.
Guess I'll never get to Japan or South Africa now.
Qantas
19 Apr 2012
Total posts 1244
Lad I don't mind it, and have done most cabins on the vast majority flight being Perth London return. My last flight was on a 747 and while it was great for a very long time, no longer cuts it...too noisy these days.
23 Jul 2017
Total posts 72
The deep unique hum of the big engines on the Queen as so soporific and comforting. Zzzzzz! but some people hear them differently.
28 May 2020
Total posts 3
I agree, the Dreamliner is too small, and were just not a good replacement for the 787. The problem is that Mr. Joyce and Qantas are set on being a premium airline. With that comes a large number of premium seats (biz, pe). However, the 787-9 is a small plane. Qantas is now forced to put more seats in that small plane so they can try and match (or come close) to a profitable capacity. Unfortunately, all of this means smaller and tighter seats. I feel that the 787-9 just doesn't have that same special feeling like the 747, I'm no longer excited to fly with Qantas.
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