Qantas to fly non-stop from Perth to London in 17 hours

Perth has beat Darwin to become the first Australian city with a regular non-stop flight to London.

A Qantas Dreamliner will fly non-stop from Perth to London in 17 hours.

Perth has beat Darwin to become the first Australian city with a regular non-stop flight to London — from March 2018, there will be a daily 17-hour Qantas flight from the West Australian capital to Heathrow aboard the 787-9 Dreamliner.

The 14,498km flight will be the first regular passenger service to directly link Australia with ­Europe when it begins in March 2018. As speculation built last week that Perth had secured the route, former deputy prime minister Tim Fischer urged the Gunner government to steal it from West Australia and become the Dubai of Australia.

Mr Fischer, a former chairman of Tourism Australia, urged the Northern Territory government to show the same initiative that helped it grab the $34 billion Inpex project from Western Australia in 2008.

Premier Colin Barnett, who is also the state Tourism Minister, estimated the new flight would bring $770 million to the state’s economy annually.

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

Qantas’s own modelling suggested Australians would travel from other capitals to Perth to fly to London. This would take an hour off their overall travel time.

“When Qantas created the Kangaroo Route to London in 1947, it took four days and nine stops,” he said. “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.

“It’s great news for travellers because it will make it easier to get to London. It’s great news for Western Australia because it will bring jobs and tourism.

“And it’s great news for the nation, because it will bring us closer to one of our biggest trade partners and sources of visitors.”