Victorville is a CBP airport meaning costs are minimal (up to $300) for clearance, you can request customs and immigration at Mojave or Marana but it will be much more expensive and more difficult to arrange. Hawaii makes sense as it takes the hassle away and requires minimal crew. With OJI already running late I would imagine crewing is becoming more of an issue with the finite resources in place.

Thanks Mark.

Things don't seem to be going well for the A380 fleet at the moment. OQG went tech in LHR Sunday and was unable to operate the QF2 2125 departure. British Airways Engineering were on site and it was taken over to there base. OQL arrived Monday off the QF1 and was turned around to operate Sundays QF2 some 14 hours late. BA hope to have OQG ready for a late departure of todays afternoon QF10 departure.

I suppose you could say, what do you expect, when the 11 A.380's available for service (OQE in Manila in maintenance) are being flogged 7 days a week except for 2 days each week when DFW does not go on a Tuesday. With YVR flights also on at the moment the 11 744's are in use each day. No spares in the fleet with OJI gone.

Flogging the fleet to death like they are is causing issues. Last night's Tokyo service also cancelled - or pushed back to 10am today! No 747's available apparently. All this as OJI jets off to the desert for one last time. They need more aircraft pronto. One plane goes u/s and the whole network suffers.

Hi everyone.

You may be wondering what happened to the old QF 744's which were/still are at Victorville.
Late last year Qantas sold all their 744's in storage, this is what happened to them according to AussieAirliners:

OJB: Scrapped
OJC: Scrapped
OJD: Scrapped
OJE: In storage
OJF: Scrapped
OJL: In Storage
OJN: In Storage
OJO: Scrapped
OJP: In Storage
OJQ: In Storage

Also, I'm certain that OJM is going to go next, then OEB. OJM has been kept because it is in the new livery, and OEB is the youngest of all the QF 744's to be retired.

Believe it or not, aircraft retirement is not based on age. You may be right that OJM will be next to go, however it may be OEB. It will be based on when the aircraft are due for maintenance checks, as OJM has just had a heavy check I would be more inclined to say that unless it goes for one soon OEB will be next to go, however it also depends on cycles, etc. Also remember that OEB has a shorter range (or so I'm told) than the Rolls Royce birds.

So when could we expect the next 747 to be retired? I imagine SYD-HKG will swap from 747 to A330 within this FY. With SYD-JNB cutting back from 3rd January next year from Daily to 6 frequencies a week also help the 747 retirement. It's also interesting because apart from one retiring in FY16 it's unclear how many more will retire between now and the 787 delivery. Is it possible SYD-HND could also change from 747 too A330?

If Qantas also changed SYD-HND from 747 to A330 that would retire another two 747s am i correct. However Im guessing SYD-HKG will be the first to change the A330 with SYD-HND in FY17.

OJI was retired at the end of June so thats probably the FY 16 retirement?

JNB was only cut back to allow for the new SFO flights.

I cant see the B744 fleet being reduced any further based on the current schedule.