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Qantas’s newest Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner, VH-ZNN, is already in service after arriving in Melbourne on Sunday.
VH-ZNN, named ‘Snowy River’, took off from Melbourne to London (Heathrow) via Perth at 3:33pm on Thursday. It is Qantas’s 14th 787-9, and the last of a batch of three that began arriving in May following a two-year delay.
“The arrival of a new aircraft is always an exciting time for our teams across Qantas and there’s a lot of people who have been involved in getting Snowy River ready for its first passenger flight to London today,” said Qantas International & Freight CEO Cam Wallace.
“There’s a lot more to come as the biggest fleet renewal program in our history continues to ramp up. This is the eighth new aircraft we’ve added to the Qantas group network this year as we’ve taken delivery of new planes, and we’re on track to add another four over the next six months.”
The planes are necessary for Qantas to increase capacity and launch new routes. In particular, the airline is currently in talks with Air France to develop a direct route from Perth to France, as well as several other additional European locations.
“We want to do Paris, and we’re talking to Air France and other European airlines about how we could do that,” said CEO Alan Joyce earlier this year.
Qantas is currently undergoing a major fleet renewal program, dubbed Project Winton, which means it will either buy or have purchase rights to up to 299 narrow-body and 12 wide-body aircraft for delivery over the next decade.
This includes nine more A321s that it will then convert into freighters; 12 Airbus A350-1000 jets to launch Project Sunrise; and 20 Airbus A321XLRs and 29 A220-300s to fly its domestic routes.
The latter includes an option to purchase up to 85 additional Airbuses through to 2034.
