Qantas Flies Its Last A380 From Melbourne to Los Angeles on October 24 as the 787-9 Takes Over

Qantas flies its last scheduled Airbus A380 from Melbourne Airport to Los Angeles on Saturday, October 24, 2026, as flight QF93. From October 25, a Boeing 787-9 flies the route every day.

The switch ends about 18 years of Qantas superjumbo flying from Melbourne, a chapter that opened on this same route in October 2008, when Qantas launched A380 service between Melbourne and Los Angeles. It also removes first class from Qantas flights to the US out of Melbourne, because the 787-9 has no first cabin.

What changes on QF93 and QF94

Until now, the Melbourne and Los Angeles pairing has run on a split schedule: an A380 two days a week and a 787 on the other five, as Executive Traveller reported in March. FlightAware’s flight history shows the A380 operating QF93 on Saturdays and Mondays through October.

AeroRoutes, which tracks airline schedule filings, listed QF93 and the return QF94 as a daily 787-9 operation from October 25 for the northern winter 2026/27 season. It reported the change in February.

The seat gap is large. Qantas’s A380s carry 485 passengers in four cabins, including 14 first class suites and 341 economy seats, while the Boeing 787-9 on the route seats 236.

An analysis by Simple Flying of Cirium schedule data puts the loss at 498 round-trip seats on each day the 787 replaces the A380. The same data show no Qantas A380 departures scheduled from Melbourne after October 24.

Why Qantas is moving the superjumbo

Qantas gave the reason in its half-year results on February 26, 2026. Demand for flights from the US to Australia had grown, the airline said, but “this has not offset reduced demand in Economy for flights from Australia to the US.”

Its answer was to swap the A380 for a 787 on Melbourne to Los Angeles and move the freed superjumbo to Sydney to Singapore. Executive Traveller also reported that the daily Sydney to Los Angeles A380 drops to six flights a week from October 25.

Group CEO Vanessa Hudson played the change down at the half-year market update. “This is just a normal course of optimising network management,” she said, according to Executive Traveller, and tied it to the airline’s new Sydney to Las Vegas route.

Why the 787 fits this route better

An A380 makes money only when its huge economy cabin fills up. Of the 485 seats on a Qantas A380, 341 are economy, so a softer leisure market heading from Australia to the US hits the superjumbo harder than any smaller jet.

The twin-engine 787-9 has less than half the A380’s seats, so its cabin is easier to fill every day. That lets Qantas keep a daily Melbourne departure while matching its seats to the weaker economy demand it described.

Sydney to Singapore is the opposite case, a route the A380 can fly daily, and Executive Traveller reported that the move adds capacity there to better match demand. Qantas runs a fleet of 10 A380s, and recently rotated two of them through maintenance when it swapped jets between London and Dresden in a single day.

Those 10 aircraft average 17.1 years old, according to Simple Flying, and Qantas is one of 10 airlines still flying the A380 on scheduled services.

What it means for Melbourne

Melbourne will not lose the A380 entirely. Emirates flies two A380s a day from Dubai and Singapore Airlines one a day from Singapore, Simple Flying reported.

For Qantas customers in Melbourne, though, October 24 is the last scheduled chance to fly the airline’s A380 first class suite from their home airport. From the next day, the route is all 787-9.