Flying Perth to London non-stop

Soon Qantas will begin direct flights between Perth and London and everyone seems excited; me less so, but I appear to be in the minority. The original Australia to London trip back in 1935 took 12 days departing from Brisbane, this included 31 stops along the way.  The kangaroo route kicked off in 1947 taking only 4 days with stops in Darwin, Singapore, Calcutta, Karachi, Cairo and Tripoli; an improvement but remaining a somewhat arduous journey.

Still, a 17 hour flight is going to hurt no matter how you look at it. However, this new service has plenty of support with upgrades to Perth Domestic Terminal nearing completion allowing inbound domestic flights to link with international flights. This has required immigration facilities to be built at the domestic terminal with multiple internal terminals to operate from Perth Airport and one suspects upgraded duty free shopping and restaurant/bar facilities.

Qantas dropped the kangaroo route in 2013 due to financial difficulty instead allowing Emirates A380 to carry it's passengers from Sydney to Dubai with Qantas picking up the Dubai to London route. After regaining a healthy profit and loss statement, Qantas recommenced the kangaroo route delivering record profits before announcing the new direct service from Perth to London with the new reconfigured Boeing 787-9 Dreamliners.

Perth can never be an international hub like Singapore, Hong Kong or Dubai based upon it's location at pretty much the end of the world. However, what Perth can become is a domestic Australian hub to launch services to Africa, Europe, the Middle East and central Asia along with the standard destinations of South-East Asia. Then there is the standard domestic travel within the state driven by the resources industry for both the mining and oil/gas sectors including exploration and production.

This is an exciting time to travel from Perth, our once sub-standard facilities are much improved with new terminals, a rail link currently under construction and dramatically increased services all driven by demand. Flights are becoming cheaper, routes extended, increased frequency and better infrastructure will hopefully also attract a greater share of inbound tourists.