The A380 is a really interesting case study. Boeing had literal decades of owning the commercial aviation market thanks to the 747. The 747 was a 4 engine plane

The A380 is a really interesting case study. Boeing had literal decades of owning the commercial aviation market thanks to the 747. The 747 was a 4 engine plane and the elevated cockpit made it elegant for cargo. So 20 or so years ago it was believed we needed a new 747. Boeing had their own variant (based on the 747) that failed to attract interest from airlines. Boeing didn't make a smart machine here. They just lost the competition. But some bad assumptions went into it: 1. We needed 4 engines. Engines now are so reliable that many of them will never be replaced over the lifetime of the airframe (decades); 2. The A380 often required infrastructure upgrades. This could include runways (for the larger weight) and the air terminals; 4. There are very few airports (and the routes attached to them) where landing slots became such an issue that a higher capacity plane was justified; 5. The A380 is praticularly ill-suited for the (massive) North American market. People not from NA might not understand just how many airports there are and people prefer direct connections rather than hub-and-spoke for obvious reasons. This favors smaller planes which is why you have airlines that exclusively operate on smaller planes (eg Southwest is 100% 737s of various generations); 6. The A380 failed to solve the range problem. Or rather there was still a need for planes that could go further than the A380 could; 7. Hug and spoke models only favored certain kinds of airlines. It's why the A380 was relatively popular with the ME3 airlines (Emierates in particular). Mos tpeople aren't flying to the Middle East. They're flying between Asia and Europe. Also, European and Asian airlines would operate the A380 between Europe and Asia. Australia like Europe has relatively few airports, particularly international airports. So it somewhat suits the A380. The most important routes for Qantas in particular are transpacific, particularly Sydney to LA. There's a lot of politics around transpacific flights such that relatively few airlines could fly them and they were hugely profitable as a result. Qantas has long wanted longer range planes to directly fly to London and New York without a stopover. Several years ago they added direct flights between Perth and London, which has been a huge success. Sydney to London or NYC is still beyond current ranges but that'll change in 2025 or so with ULR (ultra long range) variants of the A350 and 777. Less seats, more fuel, basically. Possibly a longer fuselage too. So Qantas still has a reasonable demand for the A380 flying from Sydney and Melbourne to Dubai (to connect to Europe). Note: this has only been the case for 10 years or so. Prior to that Qantas's stepping stone to Europe was Singapore and Qantas had a strong partnership with BA (ie codeshared flights, coordinated schedules). So this un-mothballing of the A380s is really temporary until Qantas can fly directly form Sydney to Europe.