With crude below $20 a barrel (West Texas Intermediate hit $19.92 last night according to the FT) and likely to stay low for a good year or two (the Russia/Saudi peeing contest showing no sign of abating), Qantas might well decide to extract another year of flying out of the remaining 747's, when the time comes to resume operations.
In fact, they might even get airborne before the A380's. With oil at those prices fuel burn suddenly becomes less of a dominant concern and other factors become more important. I know several QF engineers who say rude words when asked about maintaining the A380 and nice(r) things when asked about the 747. And the 747 is, from a seat sales point of view, big but not massive, unlike like the A380. If travel starts up slowly in six months time, considering the above factors, you might find the 747's running SYD-LAX or SYD-LHR while the A380s stay grounded, waiting for load factors to grow enough to justify bringing them back.
It would be just like the 90's again.
