A Qantas Airways Airbus 380 jumbo jet from Sydney, Australia, landed
for the first time in San Francisco yesterday. Qantas announced it will
replace its existing Sydney to San Francisco B747 service with the A380 within a year.
Photo courtesy Qantas Airways
By Luke Thomas
January 15, 2009
With much fanfare, Qantas Airways yesterday landed its inaugural flight of a jumbo Airbus 380 under clear blue skies in San Francisco.
With Qantas upper management, an MP representing New South Wales, and a kangaroo in tow, Qantas officially marked the addition of the City of San Francisco to its G’Day USA program. It’s all part of a national campaign sponsored by Tourism Australia and Tourism New South Wales, in partnership with Qantas, to attract more Americans to the land down under.
And Qantas wants its customers to fly to Australia in comfort and style aboard its comprehensively appointed fleet of fuel-efficient A380’s, capable of carrying up to 450 passengers in four classes of service. Its A380 service, according to Qantas, will replace its existing B747 service within twelve months.
Following its arrival at SFO’s international terminal, a press conference was held followed by a guided tour of the world’s largest passenger aircraft. Mayor Gavin Newsom, Treasurer Jose Cisneros, and Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger spokesperson Barbara Kaufman were in attendance.
Newsom, noting a 40-year sister-city relationship between San Francisco and Sydney, said the Qantas flights to San Francisco generated “$9.2 million on an annual basis of state and local taxes,” as well as creating 1342 jobs.
“That’s a big number,” Newsom said.
Mayor Gavin Newsom
MP for New South Wales Kristina Keneally said of the sister-city relationship: “We share so much. We share an active lifestyle. We share a fast-paced lifestyle. We share, indeed, an economy based on tourism and professional services.”
“It’s only appropriate that we are here again as part of G’Day USA to promote to our friends and our partners in the United States, all that Sydney has to offer, all that New South Wales and all that Australia has to offer,” Keneally added.
MP for New South Wales Kristina Keneally
and Mayor Gavin Newsom at the flight controls in the Qantas A380 cockpit.
As part of the G’Day USA promotion, Qantas is currently offering one-way fares from San Francisco to Sydney, available online from its website, for $380.
More pics after the jump.
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Mayor Gavin Newsom walks past “Tucker,”
a kangaroo from the Los Angeles Zoo.
Qantas Senior Executive Vice President, Wally Mariani.
San Francisco Treasurer Jose Cisneros.
7×7 Executive Publisher Susie McCormick.
Qantas A380 Captain Mark Huxtable.
First Class.
Qantas cabin crew staffer Alana Hockley in Business Class.
Economy Class.
Best in class.
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Luke Thomas: “Can I take her out for a spin?”
Photo by Jose Cisneros
January 21, 2009 at 10:27 pm
When will the veggie nazis wake up to the fact that (in reality) Gavin is substance over style. The subsatnce being hair gel and the style being 60s hippy nonsense.
AJ
January 21, 2009 at 4:39 pm
The rumors that have been floating around for years about Gavin Newsom are apparently true — he’s all puffery and photo-ops. How this helps the city, the region, or the planet is beyond me. I agree with brookse32.
January 21, 2009 at 1:07 am
brookse32-
I agree with you. But while we are here complaining about San Francisco’s Mayor being a green minded person, here we set burning energy that is propagating it. Ironic.
January 20, 2009 at 7:57 pm
Hope swimming lessons are included 🙂
AJ
January 16, 2009 at 10:52 am
Wow… This is great. With the planet literally burning, let’s encourage -lots- more people to fly in airplanes half way across the planet and put huge additional amounts of CO2 up into the atmosphere.
And then, when oil prices surge back up again, we can watch this line totally fail, leading to the lay-off of hundreds of workers.
Brilliant…