Australian Aviation

Under the deal, Qantas will work with the Palaszczuk government on a Queensland-based SAF supply chain, as well as look at how to make best use of sugarcane and agricultural byproducts to produce fuel and how to develop new feedstocks and processes.

SIA will put on a fifth daily flight to Sydney from December, extend its A380 service to Melbourne for an extra month before adding a fifth daily flight from November, and bring four additional flights per week to Adelaide, Brisbane and Perth.

Only two flights scheduled to depart Canberra before 9am are believed to have taken off on time – Qantas flight 1513 to Melbourne and FlyPelican flight 312 to Newcastle – with others either cancelled or delayed by up to several hours, according to FlightRadar24 data.

Virgin Orbit’s extraordinary plan to launch rockets from old 747s has ended in failure. But was CEO Dan Hart dogged or deluded for thinking he could make it work? Adam Thorn investigates its demise.

The company has agreed to sell its assets, including its rocket-launching 747, to four winning bidders for just $36 million – barely 1 per cent of Orbit’s valuation in 2021.

VH-XNP (similar aircraft pictured) was en route to Townsville as flight JQ904, having departed Brisbane at 6:46am on 23 May, when it turned around due to the odd smell. The latter was later identified as hydraulic fluid from recent scheduled maintenance on the nine-year-old aircraft.