The world’s largest passenger aircraft has returned to Australia after an absence of nearly 20 months.
Sydney's Kingsford Smith Airport welcomed Qantas A380 flight number QF6023 at just after 3pm on Tuesday. The mammoth jet is the first double-decker aircraft to return to Australia for Qantas since the onset of the global pandemic.
The huge superjumbo has spent the best part of two years in storage in the Californian desert, alongside the rest of Qantas' double-decker jets which were parked owing to a lack of travel demand because of the Covid-19 pandemic.
The jet departed Dresden in Germany after undergoing thousands of hours of maintenance, including having new landing gear installed.
Named Hudson Fysh, after one of Qantas’ founders, the 483-seat A380 aircraft had been expected to remain in the desert until the end of 2023.
Its early return comes after Qantas announced plans to bring five of its superjumbos back into service as Australia reopened its borders on November 1.
The aircraft, which is the only Qantas superjumbo with a first-class cabin, will now operate on flights to Los Angeles from April 2022 and to London from July 2022.
Qantas' chief pilot and A380 captain Richard Tobiano said it was a terrific day, not only for Qantas crew, but also for passengers who love flying on the national carrier’s flagship aircraft.
“The A380 is a fantastic aircraft and we are very excited to welcome it home today. The early return is symbolic of how quickly demand for international travel has bounced back and this aircraft will play a key role in preparing our crew to return to A380 flying operations in the new year.”
Piloting the 19-hour flight from Germany to Sydney were captain Paul Grant, first officer Barry Doe, first officer David Thiess and second officer Fiona Diamond.
“Many of our crew have found other jobs during the pandemic doing everything from working in vaccination hubs and hospital wards to driving buses and tractors, and painting houses.
“Over the next few months, pilots will undergo an extensive retraining period including simulator sessions, training flights and classroom courses to prepare for take-off,” said Tobiano.
While it was in storage, Hudson Fysh and its A380 siblings were carefully maintained by Qantas engineers who carried out regular inspections on the aircraft. The jet flew to Dresden earlier this year for maintenance work and is returning with an upgraded cabin, as previously announced by Qantas.
Qantas has now said that a sixth A380 will also be coming home early before the end of 2022, with the airline's remaining four superjumbos expected to be back in the air by 2024.
The airline has seen demand for travel pick up massively since restrictions in Australia eased. It took close to half a million domestic bookings in the past two weeks, compared with about 20,000 bookings in a two-week period in August.
Qantas was the first major international airline to mandate that travellers, as well as crew, must be immunised to fly on its jets.
Captain Marvel
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Conflict, drought, famine
Estimates of the number of deaths caused by the famine range from 400,000 to 1 million, according to a document prepared for the UK House of Lords in 2024.
It has been claimed that the policies of the Ethiopian government, which took control after deposing Emperor Haile Selassie in a military-led revolution in 1974, contributed to the scale of the famine.
Dr Miriam Bradley, senior lecturer in humanitarian studies at the University of Manchester, has argued that, by the early 1980s, “several government policies combined to cause, rather than prevent, a famine which lasted from 1983 to 1985. Mengistu’s government imposed Stalinist-model agricultural policies involving forced collectivisation and villagisation [relocation of communities into planned villages].
The West became aware of the catastrophe through a series of BBC News reports by journalist Michael Buerk in October 1984 describing a “biblical famine” and containing graphic images of thousands of people, including children, facing starvation.
Band Aid
Bob Geldof, singer with the Irish rock group The Boomtown Rats, formed Band Aid in response to the horrific images shown in the news broadcasts.
With Midge Ure of the band Ultravox, he wrote the hit charity single Do They Know it’s Christmas in December 1984, featuring a string of high-profile musicians.
Following the single’s success, the idea to stage a rock concert evolved.
Live Aid was a series of simultaneous concerts that took place at Wembley Stadium in London, John F Kennedy Stadium in Philadelphia, the US, and at various other venues across the world.
The combined event was broadcast to an estimated worldwide audience of 1.5 billion.
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UK-EU trade at a glance
EU fishing vessels guaranteed access to UK waters for 12 years
Co-operation on security initiatives and procurement of defence products
Youth experience scheme to work, study or volunteer in UK and EU countries
Smoother border management with use of e-gates
Cutting red tape on import and export of food
The biog
Simon Nadim has completed 7,000 dives.
The hardest dive in the UAE is the German U-boat 110m down off the Fujairah coast.
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He also led a team that discovered the long-lost portion of the Ines oil tanker.
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COMPANY PROFILE
Name: Kumulus Water
Started: 2021
Founders: Iheb Triki and Mohamed Ali Abid
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Sector: Water technology
Number of staff: 22
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