Perth to London
 

First flight Sat 24th!
So who is the brave crew taking on the first service?
Lots of empty seats to ensure they make London, or are Qantas backing themselves with this one?

Spare crew ready in FRA just in case the oily rag starts to sniff

Plus a spare airframe in Perth before departure - "just in case". I.E 50% of the fleet avail for this departure

Unreal, good stuff.

Game Changer

What a wank

What The...I'm glad i don't work with you, you sound like you are real fun to be around.

It is a game changer, it is historic. It's as historic as the double sunrise Catalina flights. First scheduled RPT direct flight between the colonies and the motherland.

Soon, Sydney to London. Now that will be an historic occasion.

9 months on HMS Bark Endeavour, is transformed to 22 hrs on VH-XXX.

Human endeavor at it's best, even the most miserable have to acknowledge that.

How are they getting the Economy pax of at the other end? Wheelchairs? Stretchers or something?

Yeah but QF is about 8 years behind with the 787 and they only are getting 8....

Better late than never. Even makes Perth look like a half decent place to live. Lol, just kidding!

Well done to QF for trying something different to Europe/UK. If it works, may mean more destinations ex Perth.

However the amount of noise/marketing about ‘game changing’ ‘long flight’ blah blah blah, you’d think Qantas were the only airline flying that distance!!! Plenty of other airlines fly that far or further...

Yes flying OZ to Europe direvt is historic but all the other stuff is.just over the top rubbish. It isnt the worlds longest flight. The fact they have a standby 787 ready to go is laughable....the aircraft has been flying for 3 weeks, it hasnt just arrived.

I wonder how many people are actually paying to be on the flight considering the media, airline execs, corporate comms and others.....

I do feel for the punters stuck in Y

It’s a fuel efficient 767.

That’s the Australian way though. Look in the media it’s “worlds best this worlds best that”.

I know the Aussie press do go over the top on such Aussie 'firsts' but thats only because they live in a country no one has any interest in.

However it is a signifcant step ona historic route so deserves some coverage.
If its not the longest flight what is -Delhi-NY or DXB to Buenos Aires?

Ozgrade 3

I am pretty sure you sound like a few of the greasy pole climbing suckhole wannabe management corridor creepers I work with.

It is Historic, but the over the top hype has cheapened the event i my opinion.

PER - LHR = 9010 Statute Miles
DXB - EZE = 8498 Statute Miles
AKL - DOH = 9032 Statute Miles which is I believe currently the longest flight by distance until Singapore resume SIN - JFK at 9537 Statute Miles.

Standing by to be corrected

I was thinking the coverage was over the top but I unfortunately think the coverage is needed. As an airline we just don’t stand out from the crowd anymore. The generation that used to prefer to fly Qantas because it was Qantas (its national pride, service, network and safety) are disappearing, and the brand means nothing to the newer generations who either look online for a cheaper airfare or who culturally have no ties to an Australian brand.

Qantas needs to reinvent itself to the Australian public, and get back to being a proud progressive airline, not a social commentator. I sincerely hope for the future of our newest recruits that this route and the opportunities it may open up will be a reason for the board to approve more of these desperately needed aircraft and more routes.

One captain identified at least. I'm not allowed to post URLs yet but Perthnow.com.au has Captain Lisa Norman as PIC of the first flight.

Apart from the huge number of whinging poms who now live here. Please take them back.

Lisa Norman, Jeff Foote, Dave Summergreene, Troy Lane. Info was posted on a Daily Tele article. Behind a paywall but I think I read it via Facebook?

FO named as David Summergreene, obviously others unnamed - augmented crew. Worlds current second longest flight at 14,498km, longest Qatar Doha - Auckland 14,539. Don't you chaps read the papers?

I suspect the route flown will actually be longer than Doha- AKL due to the air routes over the ME/ Europe that QF must fly. Doha- AKL is mostly great circle direct tracking with a bit of weather pattern contour flying thrown in.

Here is the link to the Daily Tele article. May need to google it to get by the paywall.

Indeed.

I’m no fan of the current management, but it’s great to see something new and exciting being attempted. That being the case, why not get a bit of a publicity ‘rub’ out of the old genie lamp? If successful, it should lead to other new developments and growth (we hope). That’s one of the big ticket items we all want to see, a growing company that’s popular with the Public again. It would be in many of our best interest for this to succeed.

Good luck to the crew. May you prove the doubters wrong.

What difference will the crew make? Obviously the flight is achievable, and the aircraft is capable, or it would not be a scheduled service. They are hardly climbing on board with a bible, a bag of spanners and spares, and a bit of hope they make it.

Home market myopia is the term.
The aircraft has already 'changed the game' with LN 615 representing Qantas' (not JQ) first.

With advertising spend from Qantas reducing the red ink in the print media, do not be surprised that this is pumped as was the delivery.. Advertising buys a lot of 'reporting'

Those that may actually be interested in the reason for it (Perth London) is that the 'game changing' or was it 'world changing' alliance signed with EK contained the provision that all Qantas aircraft operating to Europe would hub through Dubai.

Fortunately Mr Joyce never got his 10 year alliance, and had to settle for five, otherwise Perth London was the only way a Qantas passenger could avoid the UAE.

If one wants to look at the stroke of genius that Mr Joyce signed:

• Qantas Operating revenue did not change at all during the five year alliance from 1 April 2013 (in real terms it declined)
• A continued loss of patronage from Qantas flights.

Mr Joyce was always careful to avoid any mention of purported financial benefit from the alliance as there was ZERO (at least for Qantas)

There has been plenty of division in the upper levels of QF management on the EK alliance, sadly whilst Mr Joyce held the big seat, and the alliance as signed persisted, there was little they could do.

This is the reason why the 787 is a bit stretched doing the route; it was the only way out of the restrictive terms that Mr Joyce sentenced Qantas to...

Rated De,

If the QF/EK partnership is so bad, then explain the reasons for it's renewal (with no QF flights to DXB).

While some might scoff at the media frenzy today, not that long ago there were complaints about the lack of attention in the face of a growing Jetstar. The public don't care if the aircraft is years old, nor do the Qantas pilots lucky enough to transfer onto something new. It's about time we had a good Qantas news story, and I certainly hope this new PER-LHR service is the great success needed to encourage more CAPEX and growth for mainline.

Does anyone know why the new service starts on the last day of Northern Winter instead of the first day of the Northern Summer scheduling period?

Having experienced 18+ hour sectors in C class, I dread to think. It's not just the seats but the (understandable) attitude of the CC, the inevitable loss of functional toilets and the utter boredom.

These days I will do anything to avoid ULH flights

Clearly the framing narrative in September 2012 has now changed: Qantas international is no longer 'terminal'. Having impaired the Qantas fleet in a case of interesting timing, disaster was averted to the tune of $326 million in depreciation. This formed the basis of the 'transformation' the other $597 million courtesy of falling fuel prices.

The possible upside for a continuance of the alliance, given the ACCC's original summation that there would be material but not substantial benefits to the consumer COULD be that this is to continue with an extension. Having surrendered European presence other than the two flights daily to London, the EK 'alliance' bringing likely negligible revenue to Qantas, it would still provide valuable feed into the domestic network, thereby protecting what was always seen by insiders as the jewel; Qantas domestic.

Given statements made to the ACCC for the Alliance's formation (By Qantas) it is now very clear and supported by financial and government data that any tangible economic benefit was captured by Emirates. As was stated earlier, fortunately Mr Joyce didn't get the ten years he wanted.

Rated De,

So is it "likely negligible revenue", or does it "provide valuable feed into the domestic network"?

The QF-EK partnership has already been approved for another 5 years. I would argue that Qantas wouldn't have bothered if there was no benefit.

It is obvious to me that Rated De is referring to the international revenue being negligible.

Will this be a "light" flight?


Will there be a large number of females?


Are the selected non payers on short turn around with basic carry on luggage?


Will carry on luggage be strictly weighed by all travellers?


Are there any other paper work savings being employed to be able to add on extra fuel without breaking the max take off paperwork figure?


Anyone care to guess when the high work load in the cockpit will be as far as a pit stop being required or not?

But I do expect this to be a light load with extra gas for the first flight or 2.

The feed may be numbers of passengers, however what is evident is that whatever the Operating Cost reduction from withdrawing from Europe, the corresponding Operating Revenue reduction was at largely the same magnitude. Any code share revenue which Qantas claim 'commercial in confidence' was negligible. The improvement ought have shown up in the Total Revenue, no matter to which revenue line it is assigned. It doesn't

The financial statements are there, you can access them and deflate the Operating Revenue(Total)yourself.

As is all the ACCC documentation, and indeed BITRE data. Qantas lost many hundreds of thousands of passengers abandoning Europe via Hong Kong, Singapore and Bangkok.


The Frequent Flyer business other than a marketing and database for sale requires a tangible International Network. Australian Qantas FF members were not so enthused swapping points for groceries; so Qantas needed to be careful in that the did not signal complete withdrawal from Europe.

Looking at Windy.com, apart from just off the coast of WA, there's no wind for most of the way. She'll make it no probs. :ok:

7.4 ton over the top. Will do it easy.

7.4t?! Might get a letter from the fleet manager (is that s/he's called in QF?)! Oh wait... :)

flight time from the flight plan?

Flying time is 17:07

Yeah right, that’s the plan.
Interesting to find out what it turns out to be!
Real world bares no resemblance to the computed world!