Qantas launches first direct flight between UK and Australia
On Thursday, Qantas offered tickets for a direct flight between London and Perth.
Daily flights on Boeing’s 787 Dreamliner aircraft will embark on the new route from 25 March 2018. The return fares for the first ever direct flight start at $1, 893.
The direct Perth flight will take 17 hours to carry onboard passengers 9.000 miles. The airline said this change was the next step of improvement of the “kangaroo route”.
We’ve said the Qantas Dreamliner is a game changer, and that’s becoming real today,” said Alan Joyce, the chief executive of Qantas.
“The kangaroo route has kept changing with new technology. It used to take four days and seven stops but now we’re able to link Australia and UK in a single hop. It’s a level of convenience Australians have never had before.”
Passengers travelling from Melbourne to London will now be able to transfer in Perth rather than Dubai. This change will reduce travel time by more than an hour Qantas said and return fares could drop as low as £900 during special deals.
This new flight will be the longest Qantas flight and the longest Dreamliner flight in the world.
Joyce has expressed that Qantas have focused on comfort in the Dreamliner cabins and that the airline would offer a lower seat count than most of its competitors.
“We’re conscious that this is a long flight, but not much longer than our Sydney to Dallas service,” he said. “It’s the kind of route that the Dreamliner was created for, because of its built-in features to reduce jet lag and improve the overall travel experience.”
The route announced in December, is targeted to appeal to both business and tourist travellers.
“This route makes Western Australia a new tourism gateway for Australia. We know from our research that there’s a lot of appetite to explore the west, not just from British and European visitors but also from Aussies on their way to London. A lot of business travellers, particularly in the resources sector, will stop off in Perth on their way to the UK,” he said.