Qantas's long haul fleet capacity: how much of an impact did the pandemic have?
The COVID-19 pandemic resulted in the most significant shock to the global airline industry in history. The near total shutdown of air travel led to airlines taking dramatic action to reduce flying and an uncertain recovery led to many airlines placing large numbers of aircraft in storage, accelerating retirements and delaying new deliveries. Carriers in different countries faced idiosyncratic conditions with border closures, immigration formalities and financial support varying significantly. This led to demand returning in an erratic and fragmented manner in late 2022.
Like most airlines, Qantas took significant action to reduce its long haul fleet. A narrative has emerged that it’s now suffering from an acute shortage of capacity. Not only due to pandemic related actions but also an underinvestment in capacity in the preceding years. This analysis intends to inform this debate by conducting a thorough analysis of Qantas’s long haul fleet availability in the pandemic’s aftermath.
It doesn’t analyse and critique fleet strategy - that is a discussion for another time - rather focusing instead on availability, taking a data driven approach to analyse the impact of aircraft retirements, storage, return to service, heavy maintenance and refurbishments.
The analysis summarises data from an original dataset we generated using ADS-B data and verified with secondary sources. Developing the dataset was intensive and required a manual examination of each aircraft’s history. This analysis focuses on presenting the data and allowing you to draw your own conclusions, while also leaving the door open to follow-up analyses on specific questions.