Last week, Qantas announced new seasonal flights to Cape Town, South Africa. They’ll operate 3x/week from Sydney using a B787-9. Cape Town has been on Qantas’s shortlist of new destinations for a long time (see our analysis from 2024 below), although the timing of the announcement comes as a surprise as it shows Qantas’s intent on utilising of at least some of the four new B787-9s due for delivery in FY28 for expansion rather than just replacing retiring capacity.
The seasonal service will operate during the southern hemisphere summer (19 October 2027 to 24 March 2028), which raises the prospect of expansion of B787-9 flying during the following northern hemisphere summer.
This begs the question, what might Qantas do with this capacity during the northern hemisphere summer?