On December 20th, 2019, a Qantas Airbus A380-842 broke a flight duration record, flying from Dresden, Germany to Sydney. The Aircraft, VH-OQH was returning from a cabin refresh in Airbus’ Maintenance facility in Dresden, Germany when it broke the 18-hour record. A big reason the Airbus was able to fly this far was that there were no passengers or cargo to carry. The flight was over 16,000km!
The airplane used the step-climbing method. First, climbing to 28,000ft. Then to 35,000ft and finally 41,000ft. The flight clocked in at 1,852km longer than the current longest commercial A380 flight; being Emirates EK488 between Dubai and Auckland, which generally takes around 16 hours.
The A380 is a capable aircraft in terms of flying long range. It’s not surprising that this flight broke the record at 16000KM. Hopefully, VH-OQH will serve Qantas for many years to come.
@anon2063420 it seems that the aircraft was repositioned to Dresden for the refitting as it isn’t a new delivery.
Edit: Apologies for the correction @anon2063420 . The OP was a bit off.
Look at the edited post. He originally mentioned that of the A380 orders left to fill most were for Qantas’. Might be worth checking the edited history before insinuating people of being off topic. My post was directed towards that inaccurate information.
