An opera singer, native animals, references to Indigenous culture and some of the country’s best known landmarks are among the Australian icons suggested to appear on Qantas’ new fleet of Boeing 787 Dreamliners.

Qantas Group CEO Alan Joyce said more than 10,000 submissions were sent to the airline and each entry included an average of four different names for a total of more than 40,000 suggestions.

“There were so many great entries that truly reflected the spirit of Australia and we’re thrilled with the response,” Mr Joyce said.

“It was obvious that people really put some thought into different themes we could use to name our fleet of eight new Dreamliners including famous explorers to some of their favourite Aussie sayings.

“And it’s fair to say there were a few suggestions which we found very funny but probably not suitable for an aircraft that will be flying around the globe,” he added.

The public will now have the opportunity to vote on what they think the final eight names should be by visiting www.qantas.com/nameourdreamliners with the eight announced in the next week.

The final 20 are:

    Qantas’ aircraft types and historic naming conventions:

• Boeing 707 and 747 – Australian capital cities and major centres
• Boeing 737-400 – Australian birds
• Boeing 737-800 – Australian towns
• Airbus A330 – Australian valleys
• Airbus A380 – Australian aviation pioneers.

For more information on Qantas’ history of naming aircraft visit the Qantas blog Roo Tales here.