Traffic

A Qantas A380 left the Victorville boneyard to fly to LAX  for maintenance. VH-OQC msn 022 departed Victorville on 20 May at 12:55am as flight QF6011 and landed at LAX at 1:39am. The last of the business’ A380s flew to the Californian desert boneyard in September 2020 but chief executive Alan Joyce has repeatedly said he believes his airline will reactivate its entire fleet of 12 A380s when the pandemic subsides. In April, he said each aircraft could potentially come back into service in as little as “three to six months”.

A Qantas A330 carried the first batch of Australian Olympic athletes to Tokyo on 17 July. The aircraft, VH-QPJ msn 0712, departed Cairns on 17 July at 1:53pm as flight QF6062 and landed in Tokyo at 8:10pm. It carried 219 officials, staff and competitors, including those from the swimming, rowing, hockey, women’s water polo, men’s beach volleyball, badminton, table tennis and weightlifting teams. The next day, the women’s beach volleyball team took a commercial flight, believed to be an All Nippon Airways 787-9, JA921A msn 43865, which departed Sydney at 9:14pm on 18 July as flight NH880 and landed in Tokyo at 5:42am the next day.

Sub-orbital

Virgin Australia co-founder Sir Richard Branson completed his mission to become the first of the billionaires currently investing in space tourism technologies to reach space aboard his own company’s rocket.

Sir Richard blasted off to the edge of space on his Virgin Galactic spaceplane on 11 July, in the company’s 22nd successful spaceflight, and fourth crewed flight to space. On his inaugural spaceflight, Sir Richard joined a full crew of two pilots and three mission specialists aboard Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo dubbed VSS Unity – a sixpassenger, two-pilot craft that is designed to make brief jaunts to suborbital space.

Take-off was slightly delayed due to earlier weather concerns, with the flight successfully taking off from Virgin Galactic’s Spaceport America in New Mexico shortly after 8:30am local time.

According to the space tourism company, VSS Unity achieved a top speed of Mach 3 after being released from the WhiteKnightTwo mothership, named VMS Eve after Branson’s own mother, at roughly 43,000 feet just after 9:15am. Unity fired up its engines in order to soar to the edge of space, roughly 282,480 feet (86 kilometres) above the Earth.

Deliveries

Babcock Australia has delivered a new AW139 to aeromedical charity RACQ CapRescue. The helicopter, which will be based in Rockhampton in central Queensland, was acquired following a funding boost announced by the state government. Babcock will also operate, crew and maintain the aircraft as part of the agreement.

“Singapore Airlines, the launch customer for the double-decker, is set to retire seven of its A380s but crucially keep 12 in service”

Rex

Rex has flown its first flight between Melbourne and Canberra. The Rex 737-8FR, VH-RQC msn 33797, departed the Victorian capital at 1:40pm on 24 June as flight ZL618 and landed in the ACT at 2:25pm. The service has been repeatedly delayed from its initial 10 June launch due to Melbourne’s fourth lockdown and subsequent movement restrictions, but will now add 200,000 seats annually to the route already serviced by Virgin and Qantas.

Defence

A RAAF World War Two Lockheed Hudson flew over Sydney’s Government House on Saturday, 12 June, to mark the Queen’s Birthday holiday in NSW. The Lockheed Hudson was used during the Second World War by the Royal Australian Air Force as a bomber and reconnaissance aircraft, and is also remembered by some as “the Old Boomerang”.

Defence has suspended flying operations of Army and RAN’s 47 Airbus MRH-90 Taipans as a “safety precaution”. The fleet, flown by 808 Squadron, has been grounded after an issue was discovered relating to the “application of the helicopter’s maintenance policy” in the aircraft’s IT support system.

“Defence and Airbus Australia Pacific are currently working collaboratively to remediate this issue,” a Defence spokesperson said.

Heavy metal

A second Singapore Airlines A380 has left the Alice Springs storage facility to eventually return to service.  9V-SKW msn 251 departed at 11:23am on 28 July and headed to Sydney for maintenance. It will then eventually return to service like the last of its aircraft to leave Alice Springs, 9V-SKQ, in February. Singapore Airlines, the launch customer for the double-decker, is set to retire seven of its A380s but crucially keep 12 in service.

An Antonov An-12, operated by cargo provider Ukraine Air Alliance, landed at Wellcamp Airport on 29 July. Performing as flight 5003, the 55-year-old aircraft, registration UR-CGV, landed at Wellcamp following an overnight flight from Indonesia and a stop-over in Cairns.

The quad-turboprop departed from Jakarta Soekarno–Hatta International Airport on at 6:08am local time on Monday, travelling nearly nine hours to Cairns in far north Queensland, where it landed just after 6pm. UR-CGV then took o£ from Cairns International Airport around 11:35am the following day, landing at Wellcamp around two hours and 45 minutes later.

Australian Aviation photographer Lenn Bayliss took the shot on these pages.