Qantas Will Refurbish Its Airbus A330s

Qantas will start refurbishing the cabins of some of its older Airbus A330s from next year. The cabin upgrade will include brand new Economy Class seats.

Earlier this year, Qantas announced an order for more Boeing 787 and Airbus A350 aircraft which will start to replace the aging Airbus A330 fleet from around 2027. But that fleet replacement program won’t be finished until early next decade. By then, most of Qantas’ A330s would be well over 20 years old.

Qantas realises this, which is why it has decided to refurbish the cabins of the A330s scheduled to leave the Qantas fleet towards the end of the replacement program.

The Qantas A330 cabin refurbishments are scheduled to begin in the 2024-25 financial year, meaning the earliest they could begin would be July 2024. It usually takes a few years before all the planned refurbishments are completed.

Qantas last refurbished its entire Airbus A330 fleet with new seats in all cabins between 2014 and 2019.

What will the Qantas A330 cabin refurbishment involve?

Qantas has not yet revealed which of its Airbus A330 jets will be refurbished. However, we would expect that the domestic-configured A330-200s might be the priority.

The A330-200s configured for short-haul operations are particularly starting to show their age, and currently have no seat-back in-flight entertainment screens in the Economy cabin. Instead, iPads loaded with movies and TV shows – but no moving map – are offered to Economy passengers. There’s also only one toilet in Business Class.

Despite this, these jets are often used on flights up to 8 hours long from Australia to Singapore, Indonesia and the Philippines.

Qantas may also refurbish some or all of the A330-300s and/or long-haul A330-200s, although those jets are in less need of a cabin upgrade.

We don’t expect Qantas to install new Business Suites on its upgraded A330s. Nor does it need to, as that’s still a comfortable and competitive product.

But Qantas will install brand new, next-generation Economy Class seats.

The refurbished Qantas A330 Economy Class will retain its current 2-4-2 seating layout. But we understand that the new seats will likely have a similar design to those being installed on the Airbus A350s that will be used for “Project Sunrise” flights.

The Qantas A350 seats will feature a new colour palette, 13-inch OLED TV screens, foot nets, tablet holders and charging outlets for every passenger. However, we would expect Qantas to retain its existing 31-inch seat pitch on the A330s, rather than the more spacious 33-inch seat pitch to be used on the ultra-long-range A350s.

Do you think Qantas’ Airbus A330s need an upgrade? And what changes would you like to see? Let us know on the AFF forum!

Matt Graham

The editor of Australian Frequent Flyer, Matt's passion for travel has taken him to over 70 countries… with the help of frequent flyer points, of course!
Matt's favourite destinations (so far) are Germany, Brazil & Kazakhstan. His interests include economics, aviation & foreign languages, and he has a soft spot for good food and red wine.

You can connect with Matt by posting on the Australian Frequent Flyer community forum and tagging @AFF Editor.