Qantas reaffirms commitment to Boeing 787 for Red Roo fleet

Qantas has reaffirmed its commitment to the Boeing 787 for the main Qantas fleet as well as its Jetstar offshoot, following the release of a fleet planning diagram for 2021 which showed 787s only in the Jetstar fleet but none in Red Roo livery.

The chart, presented at a Qantas Strategy Day held for investors earlier this week (and shown above), spurred fevered speculation in some circles that Qantas would divert all of its 50 orders for the Boeing 787 Dreamliner towards Jetstar, rather than just the initial 15 of the Boeing 787-8.

[Click here to download the entire presentation as a 6.5MB PDF]

Qantas has previously stated that the remaining 35 Dreamliners, which will be the stretched 787-9 model, would be split between the two airlines to "support international growth for both Qantas and Jetstar."

However, a Qantas spokesman confirmed to Australian Business Traveller that "the 35 Boeing 787-900s will be divided between Qantas and Jetstar."

"We haven’t announced what the breakdown of B787-9s will be across Qantas and Jetstar because this hasn’t been determined yet, given that their arrival is still some years away" the spokesman said. "That’s why there is no indicative Qantas graphic in the slide."

Pundits also appear to have overlooked the note at the bottom of the 2021 chart, which says that an "Additional B787" allocation was "TBD" ("to be determined") "based on return measures" – meaning that how the 35 787-9s were split between Qantas and Jetstar would depend on commercial forecasts closer made down the track.

Qantas intends to replace its aging Boeing 747s with the Dreamliner and has already earmarked its longest flight – the 15 hour, 13,800km direct trek from Sydney to Dallas – as one of the launch routes for the Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner.