Qantas will start flying between Melbourne and San Francisco using its new Boeing 787-9 Dreamliners at the end of next year.
The airline made the announcement Friday as its second Dreamliner, “Waltzing Matilda”, began the carrier’s first international service between Melbourne and Los Angeles.
The airline will operate the 14-hour Melbourne-LA flight six days a week, complementing an existing Airbus A380 service between the two cities.
Qantas has eight 787-9s due to be delivered by the end of 2018, with four to be based in Melbourne and four in Brisbane.
It will from March use the third and fourth planes to fly to an historic Perth-London route, which also starts in Melbourne, and by the end of 2018 operate the 787-9 on Brisbane-Los Angeles-New York.
Other destinations within range of the Brisbane-based planes include Seattle, Chicago and Vancouver, as well as ports in Asia, and a spokeswoman said Qantas was ” still exploring all options”.
The airline said capacity between Melbourne to the US would be “rebalanced” to match demand for the two Californian cities so that that the Dreamliner would fly to Los Angeles some days of the week and San Francisco on others.
“A significant number of our Melbourne passengers flying to Los Angeles already connect on to San Francisco. We also see strong demand from San Francisco, both from a tourism perspective and because of the business links between Melbourne and Silicon Valley,” Qantas International chief executive Alison Webster said.
Qantas has configured its 787-9s with 236 seats an improved economy seat, a next generation premium economy offering as well as its popular business suites.
READ: Qantas reveals its 787 dream cabin.
The Australian carrier also earlier this week announced it was reshuffling its Singapore services.
It will boost its daily QF81/82 Sydney-Singapore service from an Airbus A330 to an A380 superjumbo between March 4 and March 24. The service will then revert to an A330 as Qantas reroutes its QF1/QF2 A380 service via the South-East Asian hub.
It will also increase its year-round capacity on Perth-Singapore from daily to double daily Boeing 737-800 services from April 8.
The Perth increase comes as Jetstar Asia axes its daily Airbus A320 Perth-Singapore route from March 25.
Jetstar Melbourne-Singapore services will also be reduced from five per week to twice weekly as capacity is redeployed to unannounced other routes.
A Qantas spokesperson said the Singapore changes were part of a strategy to ensure the airline had the right aircraft on the right route to reflect customer demand.
“The changes also offer more schedule choice and improve connectivity between Qantas and Jetstar Asia as well as partner airlines through Singapore, a key hub city in our Asian network where we are seeing strong growth,’’ the spokesperson said.
