Jake Nelson

The aircraft, to be registered VH-L7A, formerly flew with Italian airline ITA and is now owned by Skytrans parent company Avia Solutions Group (ASG). It arrived in Brisbane at 7:40 on Monday morning, having flown from Lithuania via Ras Al Khaimah, Colombo, and Denpasar.

The test, conducted on a ground demonstrator aircraft dubbed “Clyde”, took place at Brisbane Airport and was the first of its kind in the Southern Hemisphere, as well as the first on a registered plane at an international airport.

Only 1.8 per cent of flights were cancelled in October 2024, around half the rate of October 2023, as detailed in Airservices’ latest Australian Aviation Network Overview report for November, though on-time performance still lags the rest of the world.

The Gulf carrier will launch a daily service via Melbourne in December 2025 using its 777 fleet, bringing international connections out of Canberra back to two after Batik Air indefinitely suspended its Denpasar service in October.

The low-cost carrier is now flying from Sydney to Port Vila, Sunshine Coast to Auckland, and Brisbane to Bangkok, and has launched four new routes in the past fortnight, with Sunshine Coast to Cairns having commenced on 4 December.

The seasonal service, currently the only non-stop link from Adelaide to mainland China, will operate three times per week, and comes after the carrier’s return to Perth in November. The state government and Adelaide Airport say they are in discussions with China Southern to extend the service beyond the beginning of March.