The Qantas Perth to London non-stop, launched in March, is proving a great success with very high loads – particularly in the premium cabins.
And the service with the Boeing 787-9 is also ticking the boxes on reliability with no flights from Perth to London and return canceled through technical issues.
The success will almost certainly ensure that the airline launches a Paris non-stop later next year, although this will be subject to the resolution of row with Perth Airport over flights to South Africa.
READ Qantas asks passengers to design future flight.
A Qantas spokesperson said Tuesday that “the Perth-London service is performing very well and exceeding expectations.”
“We see strong demand in particular across premium cabins, with the Business Suites and new Premium Economy seats proving popular on the longer sector, with consistently high loads of over 90 percent in these premium cabins.”
The Qantas 787 is also continually bettering its times for the flight both outbound and return.
The flight to London is scheduled to take 17 hours 20 minutes but it’s regularly under 17 hours with one flight taking just 16 hours 29 minutes.
For the flight from London, it is understood that the best time is 15.45 minutes – stripping an hour off the published time.
The typical cruise speed for a 787 is 900km/h but on some flights, the speed across the ground has been 1,114km/hour.
Separately, Boeing announced a commitment by proposed Vietnamese start-up Bamboo Airways to take 20 B787-9s with a list price of $US5.6 billion.
The aircraft are tentatively scheduled for delivery from April 2020 to 2021.
Bamboo is wholly onwed by Vietnamese contruction company FLC Group and has also signed a memorandum of understanding with Airbus for 24 A321neos.
The airline has said it plans to start commercial service in the fourth quarter of this year or early next year.
