Taylor Swift and her all encompassing Eras Tour took America by storm last year, breaking concert attendance records, sparking a political debate about how we buy tickets and proving that public transit is essential to many Americans. Now, the singer has taken the show international and at her stop off in Australia managed to force one airline to fly a massive Airbus A380 jet domestically.
The “New Romantics” singer is currently touring Europe as part of the international leg of her career-spanning Eras tour. However, before Swift made it to Europe she played in Australia taking over the Melbourne Cricket Ground and Sydney’s Accor Stadium. The shows were some of the biggest in Swift’s career with 96,000 fans attending each night in Melbourne and more than 80,000 in attendance in Sydney.
Getting that many die-hard Swifties to the concert on time proved to be no mean feat, with public transport across Australia feeling the strain of roughly 600,000 fans traveling to see the Eras Tour. However, the concert in Sydney required some additional support from Australian airline Qantas as rough weather hit the city in the buildup to the shows.
Severe storms hit Australia in the run up to the shows, which resulted in caps being put on the number of aircraft that could travel in and out of Sydney’s airports, reported ITV News. Because of this, Qantas was forced to cancel three of its flights from Melbourne to Sydney, which were all expected to be rammed full of Swifties.
Instead of leaving the fans high and dry, however, the Airline put on a replacement service using the biggest jet in its fleet, the Airbus A380. As ITV News reports:
Qantas used an Airbus A380 to fly from Melbourne to Sydney to ensure customers got to the western Australian city as close to schedule as possible on Friday afternoon.
The flight, which left at 5pm (local time) would get fans to Sydney just in time to see one of Swift’s four Eras tour performances at the Accor Stadium.
The huge plane, which is the world’s largest passenger aircraft, can carry 485 people, the equivalent of almost three Boeing 737 flights which normally flies on the route.
The massive Airbus would never normally be used to cover domestic routes in Australia, and Qantas instead usually reserves the plane for flights from Australia to places like London, LA and Singapore.
The special Qantas flight was just the latest installment of Taylor Swift fans impacting the way we travel. When the Eras Tour was here in America, public transport ridership was through the roof and local authorities were tracking traffic after the shows to help better plan infrastructure surrounding other massive events.