Melbourne Archives – London Air Travel

Qantas withdraws London – Dubai – Melbourne in favour of Perth stopover

Qantas its to withdraw its London Heathrow – Dubai – Melbourne route from Sunday 25 March 2018.

Qantas Boeing 787-900 Dreamliner (Image courtesy of Qantas Airways)

Following the news today that Qantas is to fly direct from London Heathrow to Perth from Sunday 25 March 2018, Qantas has also confirmed it is to also withdraw its service from London Heathrow to Melbourne via Dubai, operated with the Airbus A380.

Instead, passengers wishing to travel between London and Melbourne courtesy of Qantas can either fly on an Emirates codeshare service with a change of aircraft in Dubai.

Alternatively passengers can connect on to Qantas’ non-stop Boeing 787-900 service between London Heathrow and Perth which will ultimately originate and terminate in Melbourne.
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Qantas moots non-stop flights from London to Sydney & Melbourne

London Air Travel » Melbourne

Qantas (Image Credit: Qantas Airways)

This week’s Australian Financial Review magazine carries an extensive feature on Qantas. It is well worth a read. Much of the feature focuses on the work Qantas is doing to prepare for non-stop flights between London Heathrow and Perth.

Last year, Qantas gained a huge amount of favourable worldwide publicity when it announced non-stop flights between London Heathrow and Perth.

These flights are due to go on sale in April 2017 in advance of the route’s launch in March 2018. Whilst Qantas is still keeping some details under wraps, such its new premium economy seat, it has given the AFR some insight into its preparations for the new route. Specifically, Qantas is looking at the whole “ultra long-haul” in flight experience. This includes the design and timing of in flight meals, cabin lighting and in-flight announcements.

Also of note is that Qantas raises the possibility of non-stop flights between London and Sydney with the Ultra Long Range version of the Airbus A350-900 aircraft and Boeing 777-8X aircraft.
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Qantas to open a new lounge in London Heathrow Terminal 3 in 2017

London Air Travel » Melbourne

Qantas Airways has just announced it is to open a new dedicated lounge for first and business class passengers flying on its daily services to Sydney and Melbourne from London Heathrow Terminal 3, which will open in 2017.

Currently, Qantas does not have its own lounge at London Heathrow and eligible passengers have to make use of the British Airways Galleries Club and First lounges at London Heathrow Terminal 3.

The lounge will occupy two levels of the airport terminal with capacity for 230 passengers. The new lounge is expected to be modelled on recent Qantas lounges in Hong Kong and Singapore. Construction will commence later this year.

Features of the new lounge will include:

• Australian chef Neil Perry’s Rockpool menu and dining experience;
• Full-service bar with Rockpool cocktails;
• Full bathroom facilities including showers;
• Business facilities; and
• Children’s zone.

Eligible members of Oneworld alliance frequent flyer programmes will also have access to the lounge and with Cathay Pacific also refurbishing its lounges at London Heathrow Terminal 3, Oneworld passengers will have a good choice of lounge facilities at London Heathrow.

This is also a welcome investment by Qantas in London. Qantas has previously reduced its daily services from London Heathrow from four to two daily. It also ended its partnership with British Airways in favour a partnership with Emirates with all services to Sydney and Melbourne routed via Dubai as a consequence. There have been question marks over its long term commitment to London which can be allayed by the news of this investment.

Whilst the lounge design and menus will have a strong Australian flavour, Qantas do promise a British twist. In any event, a touch of Australia will no doubt be welcome in a wet and grey day at London Heathrow!
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Qantas Re-times London – Dubai – Melbourne

Qantas has retimed its London Heathrow – Dubai – Melbourne service in order to reduce downtime of its Airbus A380 fleet at London Heathrow.

London Air Travel » Melbourne

Qantas Airbus A380 at London Heathrow Terminal 3 (Image Credit: Heathrow)

A familiar sight for anyone passing through Heathrow during the day is a pair of Qantas A380s parked at a remote stand near Terminal 3.

Whilst providing those on a mundane business trip to Frankfurt or Geneva the opportunity to dream about going somewhere else, it serves as an illustration of the hard economics for Qantas of competing against Middle Eastern and Asian airlines in the London to Australia market.

Currently, Qantas’ twice daily flights to Australia depart late in the evening and arrive in the morning at London Heathrow meaning hugely expensive assets are left on the ground all day doing nothing.

From 20 July 2014, as part of a broader restructuring of Qantas’ network in response to a deteriorating financial performance, Qantas flights to Melbourne will be retimed from a late evening departure to an early afternoon departure.

Qantas to maintain twice-daily London services; Melbourne retimed

London Air Travel » Melbourne

Qantas has just published its half year results. In the past week there has been a frenzy of speculation in the Australian media following prior warnings from Qantas that it would incur heavy losses resulting in a significant restructuring of the airline and possibly drastic changes to its route network.

The losses themselves are as feared with Qantas reporting a loss before tax of AUD$252 million. Qantas has announced significant job cuts and disposals of aircraft and deferrals of aircraft deliveries.

There has been much speculation about the future of Qantas daily Airbus A380 services from London Heathrow to Sydney and Melbourne, following anecdotal reports of weak demand on the London Heathrow – Dubai sectors of the London – Melbourne routes.

Qantas has today confirmed that the two daily London Heathrow services will remain. However, the London – Melbourne route (currently a late night departure from London and early morning arrival, resulting in significant downtime of nearly 17 hours for the aircraft) will be retimed from November 2014.

We do not yet know what the new times are. One possible option is to retime the departure to late morning, as Qantas used to have to Sydney and Melbourne when it had four daily services from London Heathrow.

BA upbeat on Sydney; Qantas to show impact of Emirates partnership

London Air Travel » Melbourne

Emirates & Qantas Partnership (Image Credit: Emirates)

Qantas published its annual results for the year ended 30 June 2013 last week. The airline posted a modest net profit of AUD$6 million after tax, which was a significant improvement over last year’s loss of AUD$206 million.

This was primarily due a reduction in losses at Qantas’ International division, which prompted a significant reduction in capacity to Europe and the jettisoning of Qantas’ partnership with BA in favour of Emirates, by almost half to AUD$246 million.

Whilst the partnership between Emirates and Qantas is still very much in its infancy, it is curious that Qantas seems to have declined to give any clear revenue guidance on the partnership. In its results it gave only vague operational measures such as “2 times increase in codeshare bookings on EK network” and “3 times increase in EK bookings on Qantas Domestic network” compared to the partnership with British Airways and others. It is hard to draw any conclusions from such claims without seeing the detail behind the headlines.

Meanwhile, British Airways has remained upbeat on the performance of its last remaining Australian route, London-Singapore-Sydney.

End of an era for the Kangaroo Route as Qantas calls Dubai home

London Air Travel » Melbourne

There probably isn’t an airline route in the world where travellers have more choice of airlines routings than London to Australia. As non-stop routes between London and Australia remain a technical impossibility and fuel prices mean that is likely to remain the case, a stop en route has always been required.