Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport has the world’s largest airline, American Airlines Inc., as its biggest tenant. D/FW also is American’s biggest hub and ranks among the world’s leaders in flights and passengers.
What D/FW didn’t have was the world’s largest airplane serving the airport. But that changes this week.
On Monday afternoon, Qantas Airways glided an Airbus A380 to a graceful landing on one of D/FW’s west runways, making Qantas Flight 7 the first scheduled trip by the mega-jumbo jet into the North Texas airport.
Qantas beat Emirates Airline by two days. Emirates will start flying A380s on its Dubai-D/FW route on Wednesday.
With Monday as history in the making, Qantas and D/FW Airport officials teamed up to make a big deal of the A380’s arrival.
“This is a great day for the Dallas-Fort Worth region and for the airports,” airport chief executive Sean Donohue said. “A true milestone day and one of the most important days in the history of the 40 years of the airport.”
When Qantas launched service to Dallas/Fort Worth in May 2011, some doubters questioned whether it would be able to fill up its Boeing 747-400, a 364-seat airplane that the Australian airline used to launch service from its Sydney home.
But the airline has been able to attract enough customers to the route to keep its flights reasonably full — full enough, in fact, to replace the Boeing 747 with the 484-seat A380.
Vanessa Hudson, Qantas senior executive vice president for the Americas, called the route “a resounding success for us.” Qantas has carried more than 300,000 passengers between Australia and D/FW Airport in the nearly 3½ years since the flights began, she said.
She said Monday marked “a very special and historic moment for Qantas.”
Qantas even brought in actor John Travolta, a big Qantas fan who carries the title of “Qantas ambassador,” to talk up the new service.
Travolta, who starts filming a movie in Texas next week, praised Qantas, its safety record, its people and its service. But he particularly praised the airplane.
Travolta, who owns and flies a former Qantas Boeing 707, said he has flown the A380. He touted its safety features, its handling and other characteristics. It is “an amazing new aircraft,” Travolta said.
Like the Boeing 747, the Airbus A380 is a double-decker, with seating on two levels. But it’s even bigger.
It has a wingspan of about 262 feet, or just 38 feet short of a football field’s length. The 747’s wingspan is 212 feet. An A380 has a maximum takeoff weight of 560 tons, compared with about 438 tons for a 747-400.
To prepare for the coming of the A380, D/FW Airport widened some taxiways, and designers made sure the concrete at Terminal D was strong enough to withstand the weight of jumbo jets like the 747 and A380.
The D/FW Airport board last winter approved spending $2.8 million to modify gates 15 and 16 at Terminal D to handle the A380, including several jet bridges to help unload and load its nearly 500 passengers.
The Emirates and Qantas flights will use the same gates to park their A380s. It’ll take careful timing to make their schedules work.
The Emirates flight is scheduled to arrive each day at 9:45 a.m., then leave on its return flight to Dubai in the United Arab Emirates at 12:35 p.m.
Emirates crews will just have time to send their A380 on its way and pick up the pieces before the Qantas flight arrives from Sydney at 1:45 p.m. The Qantas A380 leaves to return to Sydney at 10:15 p.m.
Before Monday, the return trip to Australia had to stop in Brisbane before continuing to Sydney. The Boeing 747-400 was able to fly nonstop the 8,580 miles to D/FW Airport. But the westerly winds that pushed it along as it flew east worked against it as it flew west, leaving it with insufficient fuel to get to Sydney.
But range isn’t supposed to be an issue with the A380. Independent of any boosts or penalties from winds, Airbus rates the A380 range at about 9,700 miles, while Boeing lists the 747-400’s range at just over 8,300.
In truth, Monday didn’t mark the first D/FW landing of an Airbus A380 carrying passengers on a regularly scheduled flight. There have been several others in the past year or so. They just weren’t supposed to land here — Lufthansa diverted several Frankfurt-Houston flights to D/FW Airport.
Follow Terry Maxon on Twitter at @tmaxon.
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