Changes part of proposed five year renewal of Emirates alliance.
Qantas has just announced a number of major changes to its international networks, including the re-routing of its Sydney-London flights to operate via Singapore rather than Dubai.
The move is part of a revamped alliance with Emirates, with the carriers announcing their intention to apply for a five year extension of the partnership which kicked off in 2013.
Qantas said the changes would see the airlines better leveraging each other’s networks by providing three options to Europe – via Dubai, Perth and Singapore. The daily Qantas Sydney-London A380 service will operate via Singapore rather than Dubai, while the existing daily Melbourne-Singapore flight will also be upgraded from an A330 to an A380.
As previously announced, the existing Qantas Melbourne-Dubai-London service will be replaced with a Dreamliner service flying Melbourne-Perth London. Qantas said customer demand for flights between Australia and Dubai “will remain well served by the 77 weekly services that Emirates operates from five cities – Adelaide, Brisbane, Melbourne, Perth and Sydney – including seven daily A380 flights”.
Qantas passengers will continue to be able to fly on Emirates to Dubai where they have access to over 60 onward connections on EK to Europe, the Middle East and Africa, the carriers said.
Qantas ceo Alan Joyce said the first five years of the QF-EK alliance had been a great success. “Our partnership has evolved to a point where Qantas no longer needs to fly its own aircraft through Dubai, and that means we can redirect some of our A380 flying into Singapore and meet the strong demand we’re seeing in Asia,” he said.
The switch to Singapore from Dubai for QF’s Sydney-London flights will be effective from 25 March 2018.
More details in today’s issue of Travel Daily.
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Source: traveldaily