Qantas A380 retirement: what it means for business class

What Qantas announced

With its 2026 full-year results in late August, Qantas said it will begin retiring its A380s in 2028. The previous plan was 2032. The airline has 10 of them, averaging around 17 years old, and Airbus stopped building the type in 2021. Coverage of the announcement links the change to the cost and risk of keeping an out-of-production aircraft flying, and to Qantas expecting its new widebodies to arrive on schedule.

Qantas has not said how long the retirement will take once it starts, or when the last A380 flight will be. The reasonable reading is that it runs over a few years from 2028, and that the aircraft will keep flying until their replacements are in place.

How the business seat numbers compare

The A380 is a very large aircraft. Qantas configures it with 485 seats, 70 of them business. The only A350-1000 layout Qantas has revealed so far is the Project Sunrise version, which has 238 seats and 52 in business. Qantas has not published layouts for the rest of its replacement fleet, so treat the comparison below as the best picture available, not a final one.

That is 18 fewer business seats on a Sunrise A350 than on an A380, and 8 fewer first class suites. The new 787-9 suite aircraft have 42 business seats, fewer again. The Sunrise A350s are bought for new ultra-long routes, so they are not a like-for-like A380 replacement, and Qantas has not said what business layout its other A350-1000s will have.

What replaces the A380

Qantas says its A350s and 787s can fly all of the routes the A380 flies today. It has not said which type replaces the A380 on which route. For a business class traveller, three product changes are worth knowing about.

• A350-1000ULR: the Project Sunrise aircraft has 52 business suites with sliding doors and 80-inch beds. Our Project Sunrise guide covers the dates and the cabin.
• New 787-9 suite: Qantas revealed an updated business suite in August 2026 with a sliding privacy door, an 80-inch bed, a larger footwell and a 19-inch screen. It goes on four additional 787-9s arriving from 2028, with 42 suites in a 1-2-1 layout. Qantas has not announced a retrofit of its existing Dreamliners.
• Narrowbody lie-flat: a 16-aircraft subfleet of A321XLRs is due to get lie-flat business suites with doors from 2028. Qantas has not said which routes they will fly.

The practical consequence is that Qantas's sliding-door suites will be on the newest aircraft and absent from the oldest. Anyone who values the door should check the aircraft on their specific flight rather than assuming the airline's newest product turns up on their route.

What it could do to fares and award seats

Qantas has not said fares will rise. In the example it gave of Sydney to Dallas, it expects unit revenue to rise by about 10 per cent once an A350-1000 replaces the A380, and One Mile at a Time read that as an average fare increase of a similar size. That is an interpretation, not a Qantas statement, but the direction makes sense: a smaller, fuller aircraft sells fewer cheap seats.

Our view, and it is a view rather than a measurement: if the replacements carry fewer business seats per departure, that means fewer cheap business fares and fewer award seats on the routes affected, and the squeeze could start when the first A380s leave in 2028. The gap between a promotional fare and an ordinary one can widen when supply tightens. That is a reason to treat sales on these routes as less repeatable than they look. Our guide on when to book long-haul business class covers how to approach that.

The A380 changes before it leaves

One October 2026 report said Qantas plans to swap some A380 standard economy seats for extra-legroom economy as part of preparing for the retirements. Qantas has not confirmed the final seat count or configuration, and no date has been given. Business class on the A380 currently has 70 seats, and the report does not say that changes. It is an economy change, so it matters to anyone buying a mixed-cabin itinerary more than to a business traveller.

What to do about it

• Check the aircraft type on your flight and your date. Do not book a route on the belief that it is an A380 route or an A350 route in general.
• If you want to try the A380 business cabin, do it before 2028. After that it is likely to become harder to find.
• Compare against other carriers. Cabin size and seat design differ a lot between airlines and aircraft, so compare the seat and not just the fare. Our guide to business class seats compared is the place to start, and Cathay's Aria Suite is a door-equipped alternative on a Hong Kong routing.
• Do not count on Wi-Fi. Qantas is fitting its A380s one at a time, with the fleet due to finish around April 2027, though timelines have slipped before. Our guide to Wi-Fi on flights from Australia explains why the aircraft matters more than the airline.
• Keep an eye on current deals rather than waiting for a cheaper year. This is not a market where waiting gets easier.