Qantas Stores Aircraft at Southern California Logistics Airport

July 13, 2020
The first of a dozen Qantas A380s have left Down Under and have landed at the airliner graveyard at the Southern California Logistics Airport in the High Desert.

VICTORVILLE — The first of a dozen Qantas A380s have left Down Under and have landed at the airliner graveyard at the Southern California Logistics Airport in the High Desert.

The Australian long-haul airline is parking its A380 Airbus fleet at the Victorville airport while its international flying is in hiatus while many in the airline industry are asking whether the A380s will ever leave the graveyard again, Simple Flying reported on Tuesday.

On July 6, the Qantas aircraft "VH-OQE Lawrence Hargrave," operating as "QF6001," left Melbourne's Tullamarine Airport and flew nonstop to Victorville.

The 13,150-kilometer or nearly 8172-mile transpacific hop that crossed the International Date Line took just under 14 hours to complete before landing at 11:02 a.m. the same day in Victorville.

The plane has sat idle in Melbourne since mid-March after operating a commercial flight from Los Angeles. As of July 7, the 11 remaining Qantas A380s were grounded at several locations, including two in Melbourne, three in Sydney, three in Los Angeles, two in Dresden and one is in Abu Dhabi.

While no-one was expecting the Qantas A380s to take to the air and fly passengers anytime soon, Qantas boss Alan Joyce further dampened any expectations in a news conference in late June, saying,

"The aircraft are being put into the Mojave Desert, where the environment protects the aircraft because we have the intention at the right time to restart them, but that is a considerable amount of time away,"

Joyce added that "The A380s have to remain on the ground for at least three years until we see those international volumes brought back. There is a potential to bring all 12 A380s back, but there is a potential to bring less than 12 back."

COVID-19 has also seen Qantas resetting its messaging. The future scenario Qantas now paints for its A380s and international flying is in general rather gloomy, Simpl Flying reported.

"We think international will take a long time – nothing this next financial year— and next July, we may start to see some international services and that will only get us to 50% the following year," said Joyce.

But with no resumption of A380 services on the horizon, the pace of relocating the planes to Victorville could pick up, Simple Flying said.

Located about 145 kilometers or 90 miles northeast of Los Angeles on the site of the former George Air Force Base, SCLA is known as a graveyard, but also as an extensive maintenance and logistics hub.

In April, Popular Mechanics reported that pilot Bryan Keith left the Santa Clarita area and took his Grumman Tiger for a low altitude tour of SCLA, where he saw over 400 airliners in long-term parking due to the decrease in passenger flights amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

The primary maintenance, storage, and dissemble business at SCLA is CommAv Technical Services, which provides asset management, technical services, integrated aviation solutions, engine management, and airframe disassembly for up to 500 aircraft. They also have hanger space for 20 large aircraft.

Two Boeing 747-8 planes destined to operate as Air Force One are at SCLA. One has been there since early 2017, the other since 2019. Both are undergoing modifications to bring them up to Air Force One specs.

The parking of the Qantas A380s at SCLA is part of significant changes at Qantas. The airline's last Boeing 747 is leaving in mid-July. An airline that was synonymous with big planes is now boasting A330s and Boeing 787-9s as its big capacity planes.

For more information, visit www.qantas.com.

Reporter Rene Ray De La Cruz may be reached at 760-951-6227, [email protected], Twitter @DP_ReneDeLaCruz.

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