David Eyre 
A7-APG Airbus A380-861 of Qatar Airways at Perth Airport, Western Australia - 6 December 2022. **Resumption of Qatar Airways A380 on Doha - Perth route**. Replacing the previous daily Boeing 777-300ER, the A380 has returned to Perth services for the first time since 31 March 2020 when the COVID-19 pandemic restricted travel. Flight QR900 from Doha is seen here about to land on runway 21 at Perth at sunset. Photo © Nick Stubbs-Ross
From today (6 December 2022), Qatar Airways has replaced the previous daily Boeing 777-300ER aircraft used on Doha – Perth services with the Airbus A380.
A7-APG operated the QR900 service from Doha today, the first Qatar A380 service since 31 March 2020, when COVID-19 pandemic travel restrictions caused changes to these services.
Unlike many other international airports, Doha’s Hamad International Airport continued to allow passenger transit during the pandemic, enabling Qatar Airways to be one of the few international airlines to keep flying. For this reason, Qatar Airways played a key role in repatriating people to their home countries or to Australia.
Qatar operated twice daily Perth services using Airbus A380 on QR900/QR901 from 27-31 March 2020 and added a second daily Boeing 777-300ER aircraft as QR990/QR991 from 30 March 2020.
They switched to Airbus A350-900 and A350-1000 aircraft on Perth services from 23 April 2020, starting with A350-900 A7-AMG, operating four flights per week on Tuesday/Thursday/Saturday/Sunday.
Qatar Airways Cargo also commenced dedicated freighter flights to and from Australia, due to strong demand for the nation’s pharmaceuticals and fresh produce during the COVID-19 crisis. The twice-weekly journeys to Melbourne and Perth, with a tech stop at Singapore, added 200 tonnes of main deck cargo capacity each week, each way. Previously, the airline only operated belly-hold freight services.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, the Chief Executive Officer of Qatar Airways stored all of their A380s as he considered the type too large to operate in the post-COVID period, as passenger numbers were not too low initially. However, the airline later re-introduced all of its A380s.
Qatar Airways had a dispute with Airbus about A350 paint degradation issues and stored a number of affected A350s. While this was being resolved, Qatar switched back to the Boeing 777-300ER on Perth services, with the last of these being operated by A7-BEX on 5 December 2022, before the switch back to A380s.
