In an embarrassing setback to Qantas’s fleet-recovery programme, the airline’s recently refurbished Airbus A380 (tail number VH-OQC) was forced out of service in Los Angeles on 10 December when a wing slat broke off during descent. The super-jumbo had only just completed more than three years in desert storage and a 100,000-hour maintenance overhaul in Abu Dhabi before resuming commercial rotations.
Flight QF11 from Sydney landed safely, with Qantas reassuring passengers that Airbus procedures allow an A380 to land without slats. Yet the incident triggered the cancellation of the return sector—stranding over 450 travellers, including former ambassador Joe Hockey, and forcing the airline to scramble replacement capacity at the height of the Christmas rush.
For passengers suddenly facing rerouted itineraries or unexpected stopovers, VisaHQ’s Australian portal (https://www.visahq.com/australia/) can quickly arrange any required visas or transit documents, offering expedited processing and real-time tracking so disrupted travellers can keep their plans on course.
![Qantas A380 grounded in Los Angeles after wing-slat failure on first return flight]()
Early passenger reports also pointed to cabin-power glitches, malfunctioning seats and in-flight-entertainment outages, raising questions about quality control on what Qantas had described as its “largest-ever refresh”. Engineers are replacing the damaged panel, while the Australian Transport Safety Bureau awaits a preliminary engineering report to determine whether a formal investigation is warranted.
The grounding is a blow to Qantas’s push to restore pre-pandemic international capacity amid surging demand for US travel and tight aircraft availability worldwide. Corporate travel managers should anticipate downstream schedule changes on flagship A380 routes, particularly Sydney–Dallas and Sydney–Los Angeles, until the super-jumbo returns to service. Flexible ticketing policies are in place, but seat-inventory crunches may persist through the holiday peak.
The incident also underscores the operational risks of long-term aircraft storage and the critical importance of post-maintenance shakedown flights—issues that other carriers re-activating wide-bodies should heed as global fleets normalise.
Flight QF11 from Sydney landed safely, with Qantas reassuring passengers that Airbus procedures allow an A380 to land without slats. Yet the incident triggered the cancellation of the return sector—stranding over 450 travellers, including former ambassador Joe Hockey, and forcing the airline to scramble replacement capacity at the height of the Christmas rush.
For passengers suddenly facing rerouted itineraries or unexpected stopovers, VisaHQ’s Australian portal (https://www.visahq.com/australia/) can quickly arrange any required visas or transit documents, offering expedited processing and real-time tracking so disrupted travellers can keep their plans on course.
Early passenger reports also pointed to cabin-power glitches, malfunctioning seats and in-flight-entertainment outages, raising questions about quality control on what Qantas had described as its “largest-ever refresh”. Engineers are replacing the damaged panel, while the Australian Transport Safety Bureau awaits a preliminary engineering report to determine whether a formal investigation is warranted.
The grounding is a blow to Qantas’s push to restore pre-pandemic international capacity amid surging demand for US travel and tight aircraft availability worldwide. Corporate travel managers should anticipate downstream schedule changes on flagship A380 routes, particularly Sydney–Dallas and Sydney–Los Angeles, until the super-jumbo returns to service. Flexible ticketing policies are in place, but seat-inventory crunches may persist through the holiday peak.
The incident also underscores the operational risks of long-term aircraft storage and the critical importance of post-maintenance shakedown flights—issues that other carriers re-activating wide-bodies should heed as global fleets normalise.
