Boeing 787
Employees of All Nippon Airways (ANA) queue in front of the company's Boeing 787 Dreamliner plane after its test flight at Haneda airport in Tokyo April 28, 2013. Reuters/Yuya Shino

It is not only a direct London-Perth route which new Qantas Boeing 787 Dreamliner jets would possibly fly but also two other Australia-European routes. Qantas CEO Alan Joyce points to the Sydney-Paris and Melbourne-Rome routes as the possible non-stop ultralong-haul flights when the Australian flag carrier receives its new aircraft.

However, Joyce assures Qantas 787s would not fly to 40 destinations already covered by Emirates, its hub partner, but instead fly to other top destinations. He says combining direct and via-Dubai services gives Qantas “a very feasible and economic operation in Europe that works very well,” reports Australian Business Traveller.

The Perth-London route would be an alternative to A380 trips to the Dubai hub of Emirates. The partnership of the two air carriers requires the UAE city would be the stopover of Qantas flights to Europe, but three new generation of planes could result in direct flights instead. These are the Boeing 787, Boeing 777-8 and Airbus A350-900ULR.

The Airbus A350-900ULR is the same aircraft that Singapore Airlines ordered in 2015 and would fly non-stop to the US cities of New York and Los Angeles. Boeing’s 777-8X is also capable of flying more than 18 hours straight economically, Joyce says, reports The Australian.

Because of passenger preference for direct flights to their ultimate destinations, orders for mid-size plane models have been rising in recent years. Qantas would replace its bigger Boeing 747 jets with Boeing 787-9 planes for long-haul routes, Joyce adds.

Qantas expects to announce its first Dreamliner jet routes by the end of 2016. Joyce says the air carrier would no longer push through with its additional order of eight Airbus 380 jets since it would instead keep flying the 12 it owns for a longer period.

VIDEO: Qantas and Emirates Partnership

Source: Qantas