A Qantas B787-9 like the one that flew between Barcelona and Australia and back in May 2022. Picture: Qantas

Despite its popularity and almost universal appeal, football (“soccer” if you live in America) is certainly not a topic we cover often on this site.

But this month there was an event that caught my eye and thought it relevant to mention it here, if only briefly.

Perhaps because this piece of news contains some echoes of the, now confirmed, upcoming “Project Sunrise”, Qantas ambitious plan to link nonstop Europe and the East Coast of the US from Sydney and the, let’s say, “populated” corner of Australia (the primary reason it ordered recently 12 ultra-long haul A350-1000 aircraft).

It was a one off, but on 23rd May Qantas operated the first ever nonstop flight between Spain and Australia. A rare event that, naturally, draw the curiosity of the Spanish planespotting community.

This was not the first time that Qantas visited Barcelona, though, just before the pandemic, a Boeing 747-400 of the Australian carrier made a stopover in the Catalan capital, as part of an air cruise organized by Constellation Cruises. Back then, I wrote more extensively about that cruise in this piece for CNN.

Here is the original twit by @Aeropuerto_BCN (an must-follow account for everything related to Barcelona airport and its airlines and routes)

The flight was operated by a Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner, which covered the distance between Barcelona and Darwin. After touching down in the Northern Territory, it then continued all the way to Sydney.

The purpose? To take FC Barcelona to play a friendly game in Sydney (in case you were wondering, it was a 3-2 win for Barcelona over an A-Leagues All-star team).

There was not much time for FCB players to enjoy the Australian city, because as soon as the match was over they were flown back to Europe the same way!

Some interesting details about this B787-9 aircraft (VH-ZNI) as explained by @MGMese: during the time the Football Club Barcelona players were in Sydney it managed to complete a scheduled return trip to Dallas (DFW). And after dropping FCB back in Barcelona, it flew empty to London Heathrow (LHR) to pick up passengers (and then fly back to Australia, I guess)

Here’s the Flightradar24 flight log (couldn’t get the one for the first leg of the trip). Interestingly until late 2021 the flight numbers used QF302/QF303 seem to have been used on the Sydney to Shanghai-Pudong (PVG) run

While I couldn’t get hold of any pics of the aircraft, the Football Club Barcelona press service forwarded me a couple of pics that show the cabin and atmosphere on this very special and long charter flight!

Qantas flew nonstop from Australia to Barcelona (with FCB onboard)