Qantas re-routes Sydney-London flights

Qantas is changing the route of its Sydney to London service as it extends its partnership with Emirates.

An Emirates flight attendant in front of a Qantas jet. The airlines’ partnership will continue for five more years.

Qantas is making changes to its popular Sydney to London route, which will go via Singapore instead of Dubai as the airline extends its partnership with Gulf carrier Emirates.

The carrier announced that from March 25, the daily QF1 service from Sydney to London will go via Singapore’s Changi rather than via the United Arab Emirates city of Dubai.

As well, the airline will upgrade the daily Melbourne to Singapore flight from an A330 to an A380, the superjumbo aircraft that is popular with travellers because of its comfort levels.

The announcement was made as Qantas said it would apply to extend its partnership with Emirates for five years.

Qantas Group chief executive Alan Joyce said that some of the A380s flying into Singapore could be redirected and help meet the strong demand in Asia.

“What we’ve been looking at for some time is how do we continue to grow the Asian market” without having to buying extra aircraft for that purpose, he said.

Qantas (QAN) has already increased capacity to high-growth markets in Asia and is planning to deploy more capacity to Asia in the future.

He said the partnership with Emirates had “evolved to a point where Qantas no longer needs to fly its own aircraft through Dubai”.

He added: “Don’t get us wrong on this, we couldn’t be more positive about Dubai.”

The announcement comes after Qantas’s announcement that from March, it will put on a Perth to London direct route. This too will put an end to the existing stopover in Dubai for passengers going with Qantas from Melbourne to London.

But Emirates will operate 77 weekly services from five cities in Australia to Dubai.

This means that travellers will be able to get to the UK and the rest of Europe using Dubai, Perth or Singapore.

Last week Qantas announced that it wanted to be able to fly from Australia’s eastern states to London and New York within five years.

Asked about the impact on members of the Qantas loyalty program, Qantas International boss Gareth Evans said that “from a customer perspective this isn’t going to be a huge change from what we’ve got today”.

Mr Joyce said there would be “more choice” for frequent flyers to redeem points.

“There’s no problems with availability on premium classes on Emirates for redeeming points. It’s pretty big.”

Qantas said the changes would deliver financial benefits to both airlines, with Qantas’s annualised net benefit estimated at more than $80 million, from full-year 2019 onwards.