Jaunted

Qantas' First Announcement: The airline is committing to a three-year, $44 million partnership in conjunction with Tourism Australia’s new “There’s nothing like Australia” campaign (you can see the campaign’s launch video here). That’s in addition to the over $90 million the airline itself spent in the last financial year to promote Australia as a destination. We might have called the campaign the "worst travel ad in the world," but that isn't stopping Qantas from jumping onboard.

Qantas' Second Announcement: This is a little more a propos of our post-conference discussion with Mr. Joyce, in that Qantas announced a slew of new air services with the A380 as their centerpiece. The airline currently has six A380s in service, but ten total on order, the rest of which it expects to be delivered by March 2011. That will allow the airline to up its services between Los Angeles and Melbourne to six times a week, and offer daily service between Melbourne and London via Singapore (up from two per week currently).

All this news means Qantas fliers will be spending a lot more time in these sky-bound behemoths, but so far they don’t seem to mind, thanks to a plethora of awards the airline has won, including the Chicago Atheneum Good Design Award for its first class suites, tickets for which cost around $11,000 each way from LAX to Sydney. Want to know what makes them so special? Take a gander at the quick video interview we scored with Alan Joyce to find out, and to hear why he calls Qantas’s A380s the “first designer airplanes in the world.”

Then next week, look out for our coverage of the Qantas A380 experience, and an inside look at the groovy new Marc Newson-designed First Lounge at Sydney Airport, after we hop on their flight from Sydney to LAX on the Queen’s Birthday, of all days…

Disclosure: We were in Australia thanks to Tourism Australia, but all views expressed here are our own.