Qantas used an Airbus A380 for transtasman recovery flights following Cyclone Gabrielle. Photo / Supplied
Qantas used an Airbus A380 for transtasman recovery flights following Cyclone Gabrielle. Photo / Supplied
Qantas will use a superjumbo A380 today to help passengers disrupted by Cyclone Gabrielle get across the Tasman.
With around 480 seats the aircraft will boost capacity by more than two and a half times the Boeing 737-800 the airline was going to use for the Sydney-Auckland return flight thisafternoon.
The inbound flight, QF143, arrived around 3pm. Passengers were said to be fizzing about the special flights on the 500-tonne aircraft.
It is understood Qantas has about 3500 passengers to re-book across the Tasman after Auckland Airport was closed to international flights for two days because of the cyclone.
The A380 used for today’s flights is one of the last of its superjumbos the airline has brought back from desert storage and refurbished.
The airline parked its 12-strong fleet when the pandemic hit in 2020 and will have brought 10 of them back to meet soaring demand for long-haul travel.
A Qantas A380 at Auckland Airport. Photo / Supplied
It is not the first time Qantas has brought its A380 to Auckland. In 2008 the airline brought one to the city as part of a promotion soon after the airline took delivery of its planes.
Following the floods in Auckland on January 27, Singapore Airlines helped alliance partner Air New Zealand with one of its A389s to move stranded passengers.
Auckland Airport opened again today after a stuttering start to resuming operations yesterday.
Although there were international flights and some domestic jet flights during the morning, these stopped in the afternoon for the rest of the day after strong winds made unloading aircraft dangerous and flying risky.
Air New Zealand said 55 flights were cancelled yesterday afternoon on top of 509 flights cancelled earlier when the cyclone first hit. It is now working on clearing its backlog of more than 35,000 passengers.
Air New Zealand chief customer and sales officer Leanne Geraghty said the recovery airlift was a major effort for the airline with all parts of the business rebooking passengers.
“All hands [are] on deck rebooking customers and finding alternate solutions.”
While more than 20,000 domestic passengers were relatively easy to rebook - and many were doing it themselves - international journeys were harder.
Yesterday, of more than 10,000 international passengers affected by Cyclone Gabrielle, around 1700 were still to be re-booked. While some were being told they could face a three-week wait for their flight, it was hoped this would be cut as the airline put bigger planes on some routes and got help from alliance partners.
Passengers who faced the longest wait to be rebooked were those travelling between Auckland and Vancouver, Tokyo and Seoul.
Unlike the January floods – in which an Air NZ aircraft knocked out landing lights and then Auckland Airport’s international terminal was inundated – the arrival of Cyclone Gabrielle was well forecast.
“We’ve been able to warn our customers, give them the opportunity to defer travel or change their plans based on the information we have been given at regular intervals across the last week,” she said.
The flood also damaged some infrastructure at the airport, making the recovery more complex.
She urged domestic passengers to “self-serve” and rebook themselves if they were able.
“For our international customers, please be patient. We appreciate you may get a booking that is further out than you would like. But just bear with us over the next 24 to 48 hours as we start to [put on] additional services.”
