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Qantas prepares planes for Sydney's reopening

Australian airline Qantas is preparing its fleet for international flying.

But it's not as simple as dusting them off and just pulling out planes from their hangar.

John Walker, the airline's head of line maintenance explains.

"For this aircraft, if it were in a deep sleep, it would be over 1,000 man hours with full crews of 12 or 15 to wake the plane up. We started doing these wake-ups many, many months ago."

Sydney opens to fully vaccinated citizens and permanent residents without quarantine on November 1st.

Up until now Australia has applied strict border rules, leading Qantas to stop regular international passenger flights.

With the exception of its Airbus SE A380 super-jumbos, which remain stored in the Mojave Desert in California, most of Qantas' international fleet has already been doing some limited flying on cargo and repatriation flights.

Engineers on Thursday were checking brakes and tyres and catching up on some minor maintenance work on its fleet of A330 planes before they take to the sky.

London and Los Angeles will be the first destinations for flights from Sydney.