Qantas Orders More A321XLRs, Banks a Tidy Profit

Qantas has ordered an additional twenty A321-200XLRs. The airline made the announcement on August 28, 2025, while also releasing is financial year 2025 results.

Qantas has previously ordered twenty-eight A321-200XLRs, with the first two having recently arrived in Australia. This week’s total increases the future XLR fleet to 48 aircraft. Airbus will begin delivering this week’s order in 2028.

“These additional A321XLRs will accelerate the retirement of our 737 fleet and open up new opportunities for domestic and international travel,” said Qantas CEO Vanessa Hudson.

“Not only will the A321XLRs help us serve the corporate market travelling between Perth (PER) and the east coast of Australia, they will also allow us to expand flying on existing routes into South East Asia and open up new possibilities like Perth - India and Adelaide (ADL) - Singapore (SIN).”

Notably, 16 of the twenty aircraft ordered this week will feature lie-flat business class seats – something the initial 28 XLRs do not (yet) include. Hudson says the improved seats will provide a consistent premium experience for customers who fly domestically with Qantas and connect onto long haul services.

“Investing in new aircraft is one of the most significant ways that we can provide our customers with a better flying experience,” she said.

Qantas publicly says it will start its first scheduled A321-200XLR flights in mid-September after the arrival of VH-OGA (msn 12323) in early July and VH-OGB (msn 12427) just a week ago. However, Aero South Pacific understands that scheduled XLR flights may not start until October, with the airline having scheduled training flights on the aircraft through to the end of September.

Hudson says the aircraft will initially operate on Sydney (SYD) - Melbourne (MEL) and Sydney - Perth and be progressively rolled out on other routes. By the end of the 2026 financial year, Qantas will have seven of the aircraft type.

Qantas has recently added its third and fourth A321-200XLRs, VH-OGC (msn 12594) and VH-OGD (msn 12668), to the Australian aircraft register. However, Airbus is yet to hand over either aircraft to the airline.

The airline took delivery of 17 new aircraft in the most recent financial year. This increases to 20 new aircraft arriving this financial year and 29 in the 2027 financial year, including 36 for Qantas, 10 for Jetstar and 3 for Qantas Freight.

The first Project Sunrise A350-1000ULR will move to Airbus’ final assembly line in October this year, with deliveries starting in October 2026.

Qantas says the introduction of new aircraft is already delivering significant improvements in customer satisfaction, as well as financial and fuel benefits.

Meanwhile, the Qantas Group has declared an underlying before tax profit of AUD2.39 billion (USD1.56 billion) and a statutory after tax profit of AUD1.61 billion (USD1.05 billion) for the 12 months to June 30, 2025.

The underlying before tax profit is up 15% on the 2024 financial year result and the statutory after tax profit is up 28%. Qantas Group revenue for the 2025 financial year was AUD7.62 billion (USD4.96 billion).

The Qantas Group ended the year with AUD12.2 billion (USD7.94 billion) of liquidity, including AUD2.2 billion (USD1.43 billion) in cash, AUD1.4 billion (USD991 million) in committed undrawn facilities and AUD8.6 billion (USD5.6 billion) in unencumbered fleet and other assets. Net debt increased to AUD5 billion (USD3.26 billion).

Qantas calls this a “strong result.”

“While we are pleased with the progress we are making, we remain focused on further improving our performance and continuing to deliver,” said Hudson.