Qantas will re-route its Sydney to London Airbus A380 service via Singapore instead of Dubai from March 25, 2018, as it applies to extend its partnership with Emirates for another five years.
In addition to maintaining a second daily service between Singapore and Sydney using an A330 aircraft, Qantas will in March 2018 upgrade its existing 10-times weekly Melbourne-Singapore A330 services to a twice-daily service operated by a combination of A380 and A330 aircraft.
This will bring Qantas’ total number of services from Australia to London via Singapore to 49 weekly with a total of over 17,600 one-way seats.
With the change, Qantas passengers will be given the choice of hubbing through Perth, Singapore or Dubai (with Emirates) on trips to Europe.
The Australian national airline previously announced it was replacing its Melbourne-Dubai-London service with its ultra-longhaul Melbourne-Perth-London Boeing 787 Dreamliner flights. In addition, Qantas passengers will still be able travel to Europe via Dubai using Emirates’ 77 weekly services to Adelaide, Brisbane, Melbourne, Perth and Sydney.
Qantas estimates the changes would give it an annualised net benefit of more than AS80 million (US$63.2 million) from FY2019.
“Our partnership has evolved to a point where Qantas no longer needs to fly its own aircraft through Dubai, and that means we can redirect some of our A380s flying into Singapore and meet the strong demand we’re seeing in Asia,” Qantas chief executive Alan Joyce said in a statement.
“Improvements in aircraft technology mean the Qantas network will eventually feature a handful of direct routes between Australia and Europe, but this will never overtake the sheer number of destinations served by Emirates and that’s why Dubai will remain an important hub for our customers,” he added.
She replaces Gareth Evans, who has been appointed CEO of Jetstar Group, while current Jetstar Group chief Jayne Hrdlicka will become CEO of Qantas loyalty and digital ventures, which now also includes innovation.
