The air wing will typically consist of F-35B Lightning II multirole fighters and Merlin helicopters for airborne early warning and anti-submarine warfare.

The design emphasises flexibility, with accommodation for 250 Royal Marines and the ability to support them with attack helicopters and large troop transports such as Chinooks.

[24] Queen Elizabeth will deploy as the central part of a UK Carrier Strike Group with escorts and support ships in order to deliver carrier-enabled power projection.

[30][31] Two of the lower main blocks, together weighing more than 6,000 tonnes and forming part of the base of the ship, were assembled and joined into one piece on 30 June 2011.

[32] On 16 August 2011, the 8,000-tonne Lower Block 03 of Queen Elizabeth left BAE Systems Surface Ships' Govan shipyard in Glasgow on a large ocean-going barge.

[33] On 28 October 2012, an 11,000-tonne section of the carrier began a lengthy journey around the south coast of England, avoiding bad weather, from the shipbuilding hall at Govan to the Rosyth dockyard; it arrived on 21 November.

The ceremony was attended by Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh (the Lord High Admiral), Admiral George Zambellas (First Sea Lord), senior naval officers from the United States and France, and by politicians including David Cameron and Gordon Brown (the Prime Minister and his immediate predecessor) and Alex Salmond (the First Minister of Scotland).

The official piece of music HMS Queen Elizabeth March, composed by WO2 Bandmaster John Morrish, was performed at the naming ceremony by the Band of HM Royal Marines Scotland.

This piece of music is a competition-winning march chosen by the Carrier Alliance Group, performed and recorded by the Royal Marines Massed Bands.

[40][41] The first stage of the operation was to move the ship from inside the fitting out basin, via one of the access gates, into the Firth of Forth itself, before taking her under the three Forth bridge crossings.

[42] Once this was accomplished, the ship took to the open sea off the east coast of Scotland to undertake the first set of trials, including handling and speed tests.

[52][53] Following the ship's commissioning, she underwent a period of defect correction in Portsmouth; one instance was a leak through a seal in one of the propeller shafts, which the Royal Navy stated was not serious enough to keep Queen Elizabeth from her planned programme.

[60] On 2 March 2018 in Portsmouth Harbour, Queen Elizabeth successfully tested her port side Marine Evacuation System (MES), a series of bright orange inflatable escape chutes and rafts.

[61] Queen Elizabeth departed Portsmouth for a third time on 10 June 2018,[62] heading to the coasts of Cornwall for a second phase of helicopter flight trials.

Queen Elizabeth's first significant deployment took place during autumn 2018, when the ship travelled across the Atlantic to begin flying trials with her fixed-wing aircraft.

Although the programme covered a range of areas, including the continued workup of the Commander UK Carrier Strike Group and his staff, embarked for a deployment for the first time, and small-scale exercises to test the ship's ability to land troops in the secondary amphibious role, the primary purpose was the first phase of fixed-wing flying trials involving the F-35B over two separate periods of approximately 3–4 weeks each starting in mid-September, utilising a pair of the instrumented development aircraft from VX-23, the US Navy's air testing unit at NAS Patuxent River.

In addition to the F-35 trials, Queen Elizabeth also began qualifications for types of aircraft operated by the US armed forces, including the V-22 Osprey.

[73] During the transit north, she was to undertake an amphibious assault exercise off the coast of South Carolina using its Merlin Mk4 helicopters and Royal Marines of 42 Commando.

[73] On 25 September 2018, two US-owned F-35B test aircraft, based at Naval Air Station Patuxent River, flew out to meet Queen Elizabeth off the New Jersey coast.

[74] During the initial F-35B trials, Queen Elizabeth also began trials for the UK Carrier Group staff when the ship, along with Monmouth, formed a task group with the US Navy destroyer USS Lassen[75] and USNS Supply, a fast combat support ship, which performed RAS with Queen Elizabeth and Monmouth on 1 October 2018.

[76] During October, the first instances of cross-decking took place when a US Navy MH-53E Sea Dragon helicopter, and a US Marine Corps tiltrotor MV-22B Osprey landed on board.

[77][78] The first shipborne rolling vertical landing (SRVL) by an F-35 was undertaken on 14 October – this was also the first operational demonstration of the technique on a ship at sea, and is planned as the primary method of recovering fixed-wing aircraft aboard the Queen Elizabeth class.

[90][91] On 10 January 2019, Jane's Defence Weekly reported that F-35 aircraft of the United Kingdom would join the F-35Bs of the US Marine Corps in embarking Queen Elizabeth for the ship's first operational cruise in 2021.

On 16 December 2019, the first-ever F-35B launch in British territorial waters took place, when an aircraft of that model took off from the flight deck of HMS Queen Elizabeth in Portsmouth Harbour.

[97] HMS Queen Elizabeth departed Portsmouth in January 2020 for flight trials in UK waters for the first time and was joined by British-owned F-35B Lightning aircraft from RAF No.

[100][101] The summer 2020 period was spent in harbour undergoing preparation work for September, when the ship took part in a major carrier group exercise that was run as part of Exercise Joint Warrior, with the Queen Elizabeth accompanied not just by ships of the Royal Navy, but also an escort from both the US and Dutch navies, as well as two squadrons of F-35Bs- one each from both the RAF and USMC.

[110] A Type 45 destroyer, HMS Defender and HNLMS Evertsen detached from the group to enter the Black Sea[111] – a visit that was already planned prior to the heightened Russian activity in the region.

[112] On 7 July 2021, the group transited the Suez Canal to enter the Indian Ocean where they conducted joint exercises with the Indian Navy[113] before proceeding past Singapore, without stopping, to enter the disputed South China Sea region to conduct freedom of navigation exercises in the area with the US Navy.

Mitigation measures were also in place aboard the warships including the use of masks, social distancing and a "Track and Trace system" to monitor personnel movement.

[124] The two ships of the Queen Elizabeth class can each carry up to three passenger transfer boats (PTBs) made by Blyth-based company Alnmaritec.