Industry reacts to Qantas’ nonstop Perth-London in 2018

LONDON, ENGLAND - MAY 08: Queen Elizabeth II smiles as she leaves the State Opening of Parliament at the House of Lords on May 8, 2013 in London, England. Queen Elizabeth II unveils the coalition government's legislative programme in a speech delivered to Members of Parliament and Peers in The House of Lords. Proposed legislation is expected to be introduced on toughening immigration regulations, capping social care costs in England and setting a single state pension rate of 144 GBP per week. (Photo by Kirsty Wigglesworth - WPA Pool/Getty Images)

In widely anticipated news, Qantas has confirmed it plans to fly non-stop Perth to London from March 2018.

The flying kangaroo said it will operate its 787-9 Dreamliner on the 17-hour journey, as it makes history by providing the first ever direct link between Australia and Europe.

The new flight will operate through Qantas’ existing domestic terminals (T3/4), which will be upgraded to accommodate international flights. Tickets go on sale from April 2017; the Dreamliner will carry 236 passengers across Business, Premium Economy and Economy cabins.

Qantas Group CEO Alan Joyce said the history-making route would be a watershed for travel, tourism and trade.

“This is a game-changing route flown by a game-changing aircraft. Australians have never had a direct link to Europe before, so the opportunities this opens up are huge.”

“A direct flight makes travelling to Australia a much more attractive proposition to millions of people. We expect many travellers from Europe will start their time in Australia with a visit to Perth before going on to see other parts of the country,” Joyce said.

Many organisations welcomed the announcement, with Tourism Australia’s MD John O’Sullivan calling it a “game changing moment for Australian tourism”.

“Europe is such a critical source market for us, and the introduction by Qantas of direct flights between London and Perth really is a game changing moment for Australian tourism,” he said.

Australia is Britain’s fourth most valuable market for overseas visitor spend, fifth for the number of nights spent per trip and 10th for number of visits.

VisitBritain’s regional office told Travel Weekly “as a billion pound visitor market for Britain, the increased capacity will make it even easier for more Australians to discover Britain’s amazing moments”.

“Australians are true regional explorers around Britain with more than half visiting the English regions, one in seven visiting Scotland and 7% travelling to Wales. The new flights don’t just bring London closer to Western Australia, but will also create new ways for the rest of Australia to connect into regional Britain gateways such as Edinburgh, Glasgow and Manchester.”

Minister for Trade, Tourism and Investment, the Hon Steven Ciobo MP also commended the new flights, saying it represents “sky-high potential of the Australian tourism industry, which is already outperforming the rest of the Australian economy”.

The United Kingdom represents Australia’s third largest source market for international visitors, with more than 660,000 tourists arriving in Australia from the UK in the last year, spending $3.7 billion.

Meanwhile, The Travel Corporation, which across its brands operates a number of tours across Europe and Britain, are expecting the increased capacity to be a boon with travellers.

“For TTC and its family of brands, any additional air capacity through to Europe and Britain is much welcomed and this is particularly positive news for Trafalgar, Insight Vacations, Uniworld, Contiki, Busabout and Adventure World on the outbound side, but also great news for AAT Kings as we continue to support Tourism Australia with its successful drive for inbound tourism,” John Veitch, CEO TTC Australia told Travel Weekly.

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Make no mistake, non-stop flights from Australia to Europe have been a long held aviation dream, and for my home town to be the jumping off point is very cool and a source of parochial pride. But let's look at how this dream is being fulfilled. Essentially Alan Joyce has come to town and started shouting that if Qantas doesn’t get financial support to provide international facilities at their PER domestic terminals he'll take his Boeing 787 and go home. Has he provided any real figures regarding the numbers of pax expected to transfer from domestic QF flights (either local or interstate) to/from the LHR flights? Are there details of what re-configuration of gates and aerobridges at QF terminals T3/T4 will be required to enable this "seamless' transfer between domestic and international flights (especially with interstate wide body feeder connections)? And why wouldn't using the international T1 work if inter-terminal processes and busing were streamlined? In the old days when Perth wasn't an international terminus, international flights starting in MEL or SYD would transit T1. So given that the expectation is these flights will start in Melbourne then the pax can clear all international formalities there, and use the 'partner' EK lounge as they pass through PER. Then to top it off our gullible Premier has given QF $14M for capital works at T3/T4 in the expectation that this flight will drive a significant increase in visitors to Perth and WA. Er, hang on; if he expects the B787 pax to stay here for some time then the "seamless" international to domestic transfer will not be required. They can arrive at T1 with all the other international services and then depart domestically from T3/T4 some days later. You were conned big time Mr Barnett. All this has done is enable QF to get some badly needed PR to counter its current abysmal international offerings from Perth; delay moving all their ops to the T1 precinct (especially given that the QF SIN and JQ DSP services also move to T3/T4) by a decade or so, which screws the medium term viability of the airport master plan; and confirms that Joyce is a business bully. Yep, I hope it works, but there much better ways of doing business.

Aubrey Adams

Email the Travel Weekly team at traveldesk@travelweekly.com.au

Latest comments

Aubrey Adams says:
December 13, 2016 at 12:58 am
Make no mistake, non-stop flights from Australia to Europe have been a long held aviation dream, and for my home town to be the jumping off point is very cool and a source of parochial pride.
But let’s look at how this dream is being fulfilled. Essentially Alan Joyce has come to town and started shouting that if Qantas doesn’t get financial support to provide international facilities at their PER domestic terminals he’ll take his Boeing 787 and go home.
Has he provided any real figures regarding the numbers of pax expected to transfer from domestic QF flights (either local or interstate) to/from the LHR flights? Are there details of what re-configuration of gates and aerobridges at QF terminals T3/T4 will be required to enable this “seamless’ transfer between domestic and international flights (especially with interstate wide body feeder connections)? And why wouldn’t using the international T1 work if inter-terminal processes and busing were streamlined? In the old days when Perth wasn’t an international terminus, international flights starting in MEL or SYD would transit T1. So given that the expectation is these flights will start in Melbourne then the pax can clear all international formalities there, and use the ‘partner’ EK lounge as they pass through PER.
Then to top it off our gullible Premier has given QF $14M for capital works at T3/T4 in the expectation that this flight will drive a significant increase in visitors to Perth and WA. Er, hang on; if he expects the B787 pax to stay here for some time then the “seamless” international to domestic transfer will not be required. They can arrive at T1 with all the other international services and then depart domestically from T3/T4 some days later. You were conned big time Mr Barnett.
All this has done is enable QF to get some badly needed PR to counter its current abysmal international offerings from Perth; delay moving all their ops to the T1 precinct (especially given that the QF SIN and JQ DSP services also move to T3/T4) by a decade or so, which screws the medium term viability of the airport master plan; and confirms that Joyce is a business bully.
Yep, I hope it works, but there much better ways of doing business.
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sting says:
December 12, 2016 at 11:58 am
…….joyce to the world…
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