Qantas Reduces A380 Flights to Hong Kong

Qantas will move its Airbus A380 onto the Sydney-Hong Kong route two weeks later than scheduled this summer.

Qantas had planned to upgrade one of its daily Sydney-Hong Kong flights, QF127 and the return QF128, to an Airbus A380 from 4 December 2019. This was due to replace the Boeing 787-9. However, Qantas will now only use Airbus A380s on this route from 18 December.

At this stage, Airbus A380s are still scheduled to fly to Hong Kong from 18 December 2019 until 28 March 2020. But further schedule changes are possible as airlines struggle to fill planes bound for Hong Kong.

Qantas will instead use Boeing 747-400ER aircraft for its Sydney-Hong Kong flights from 4 December until 16 December. On 15 and 17 December, Airbus A330-300s are scheduled.

As there is no First Class on the Boeing 747 or Airbus A330, some passengers have been downgraded as a result. This includes AFF member falconea…

I had a booking on SYD-HKG on 11 Dec in F. It’s just changed to a 747 so no F. (It’s part of MELxSYDxHKG-TPE-HKGxSYD-BNE-MEL.)

It was in part booked as a status run so changing voluntarily to the 787 MEL-HKG is annoying. Plus I booked at the Premium Companion rate so there wouldn’t even be any refund….

There is still relatively good Qantas First Class award availability to Hong Kong on dates that the A380 service is retained.

Weak demand to Hong Kong

All airlines are seeing reduced demand to Hong Kong amid the ongoing Hong Kong protests. Qantas has already been swapping out aircraft on its Hong Kong routes to smaller Airbus A330-200s over the past few months. Virgin Australia has also slightly cut back its flights to Hong Kong in recent times.

Cathay Pacific, based in Hong Kong, has been especially suffering from weakened demand. The airline has already terminated flights to Dublin and reduced frequencies on some routes to Europe and North America in response.

There is some speculation that Virgin Australia could axe its Melbourne-Hong Kong route at the end of March 2020 when it commences new Brisbane-Tokyo flights. Virgin currently flies daily from both Sydney and Melbourne to Hong Kong but has been struggling to fill seats.

Join the discussion on the Australian Frequent Flyer forum: Drat – looks like QF have pulled the A380 from SYD-HKG before Christmas

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.