Reports are emerging that the Puerto Rican superstar Bad Bunny has hired an entire Airbus A380 superjumbo from the Australian flag carrier Qantas as part of preparations for the Sydney leg of his global Debí Tirar Más Fotos World Tour.
On Sunday, the 31-year-old rapper, singer, and songwriter, whose real name is Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio, wrapped the second of two sold-out concerts in São Paulo.
Someone chartered a Qantas A380 to make the flight from Sydney to São Paulo non-stop. The nearly 15-hour flight is descending in GRU now. https://t.co/O7NlrN0rZk pic.twitter.com/sGXInOcb7f
— Flightradar24 (@flightradar24) February 23, 2026
The next leg of his global tour is due to kick off in Sydney, Australia, on February 28.
Interestingly, also on Sunday, Qantas dispatched one of its eight double-deck A380s (registration: VH-OQA) from Sydney to São Paulo under flight number QF-6043.
This is a non-standard flight number that is normally used by the airline to indicate a so-called ferry flight in which a plane is positioned to a destination without passengers on board.
The nearly 15-hour flight is the first time that Qantas has visited Brazil in nearly 10 years, since it last sent charter flights to the country for the Rio Olympic Games in 2016.
It's positioning for a charter: QF308 routing São Paulo to Sydney via Auckland (tech-stop). Scheduled to depart Monday:
— Analytic Flying (@analyticflying) February 22, 2026
QF308 GRU-AKL 03:05 09:50+1
QF308 AKL-SYD 09:50+1 12:50+1 https://t.co/cg10c18qvZ
The only reason that the massive hulk of an aircraft could complete the 13,387 km flight over nearly 15 hours non-stop is that there wasn’t any passengers on board.
But the Qantas A380 wasn’t in São Paulo for long. By Monday morning, the aircraft was already back in the air and flying towards Oceania. This time, though, there were two big differences.
First, the plane had been assigned the flight number QF-308, which indicates that this is a charter flight – or, in other words, someone has paid to hire out the entire plane for their own itinerary, much like a private jet.
The second is that in order to get back to Sydney, the aircraft is making a short stopover in Auckland, New Zealand, to refuel, indicating that the plane has plenty of passengers on board.
Of course, for privacy reasons, airlines can’t publicly confirm who has chartered one of their planes, so who exactly is on this Airbus A380 remains underwraps but the hot money is that Bad Bunny and his tour entourage are using this plane to get to Australia for his global tour.
Sports and music charters of commercial aircraft aren’t all that unusual, but what is uncommon is for an Airbus A380 to be used for these types of flights.
The Qantas A380 has 14 First Class seats, 70 Business Class seats, 60 Premium Economy Seats, and a whopping 341 seats in Economy – in other words, there’s definitely enough space on board for the entire Bad Bunny tour team, and then some.
Perhaps the only other airline that charters out its A380s is Dubai-based mega carrier Emirates, which is the largest operator of the superjumbo worldwide.
As part of its massive sports sponsorship program, the airline often flies famous teams around the world on chartered flights. Embarrassingly, however, in 2021, Emirates was forced to cancel an A380 charter flight for the Arsenal soccer club after one of the team members tested positive for COVID-19.
The aircraft that was due to operate the flight had been embalazoned with a massive ‘Choose to Vaccinate’ slogan across the side of the fuselage.
Working on a charter flight for a sports team or music megastar as a flight attendant is an incredibly competitive process, although the way that airlines choose which crew works these flights can vary from airline to airline.
Often, it’s a case of crew members being hand-selected, sometimes with input from the team or artist. In other cases, airlines have a ready pool of charter flight attendants, although the selection process can still lead to allegations of discrimination.
