British Airways has just announced plans to add a second route to Australia, and of course it will be a fifth freedom route. I’m curious if this has been in the cards for some time, or if this is happening in light of developments in the Middle East in recent weeks.
In this post:
British Airways launching flights to Melbourne, Australia
As of January 9, 2027, British Airways plans to launch a second daily, year-round flight to Australia. Specifically, the airline plans to fly from London (LHR) to Melbourne (MEL) via Kuala Lumpur (KUL). The schedule will be as follows:
BA33 London to Kuala Lumpur departing 9:10PM arriving 6:05PM (+1 day)
BA33 Kuala Lumpur to Melbourne departing 7:45PM arriving 6:50AM (+2 days)
BA34 Melbourne to Kuala Lumpur departing 4:35PM arriving 9:35PM
BA34 Kuala Lumpur to London departing 11:15PM arriving 5:20AM (+1 day)
The segment between London and Kuala Lumpur covers a distance of 6,593 miles, and is blocked at 12hr55min eastbound and 14hr5min westbound. Meanwhile the Australia segment covers a distance of 3,918 miles, and is blocked at 8hr5min to Australia and 8hr to Malaysia.
British Airways intends to use a Boeing 787-9 for the route, featuring 215 seats. This includes eight first class seats, 38 business class seats, 39 premium economy seats, and 130 economy seats.
Each of the segments can be booked individually, meaning that British Airways has fifth freedom rights between Kuala Lumpur and Melbourne. This flight number is actually a continuation of British Airways’ existing route between London and Kuala Lumpur. So without a capacity boost between London and Kuala Lumpur, availability in that market will probably decrease considerably.
My take on British Airways expanding in Australia
For context, this new route to Melbourne represents a service resumption, as British Airways last flew there regularly a couple of decades ago, and at the time, the service was operated via Singapore (SIN). Furthermore, this is British Airways’ second route to Australia, as the airline also has a fifth freedom flight to Sydney (SYD), via Singapore.
It’s also interesting to consider the other carriers that have recently added flights to Melbourne, all via different intermediate points. For example, Turkish Airlines launched Melbourne flights via Singapore, while Finnair is launching Melbourne flights via Bangkok (BKK). So this seems like a logical enough route addition for British Airways, and a couple of thoughts come to mind.
First, I’m curious if this new route has been in the works for quite some time, or if British Airways only decided on this in recent weeks, in light of the current conflict. After all, it seems to me like for a substantial amount of time, some people may think twice before flying through the Gulf, if they can avoid it.
While I hate to frame it this way, oil prices aside, many European and Asian carriers probably have some new flying opportunities due to the situation the Gulf carriers are facing, especially given the markets in which they historically dominated.
My guess is that this route has been in the cards for some time, and that perhaps the conflict caused the airline to finally follow through on this. If anything, I’m surprised the route isn’t launching sooner.
Second, I think the Kuala Lumpur stopover point is interesting. I suppose it’s logical that each new fifth freedom flight to Melbourne in recent times has operated via a different Asian airport.
British Airways adding this fifth freedom flight while not increasing capacity between London and Kuala Lumpur suggests that the route is really struggling. I have to imagine British Airways will want to mostly fill this route with passengers traveling between the UK and Australia, given that Kuala Lumpur to Melbourne has some low fares, and I can’t imagine people will pay a huge premium to fly British Airways.
While Kuala Lumpur is a hub for oneworld partner Malaysia Airlines, the carriers don’t otherwise have a joint venture or closer cooperation that would cover these flights.
Bottom line
As of January 2027, British Airways will launch a route from London to Melbourne via Kuala Lumpur, using a Boeing 787. The airline is simply maintaining existing capacity between London and Kuala Lumpur, while the Melbourne fifth freedom service is what’s new. This will be the first time in around 20 years that the airline flies to Melbourne, and it complements service to Sydney.
What do you make of Finnair’s new Melbourne route?
You’d think this will struggle to pick up leisure travel on the MEL-KUL leg with MH, AirAsia and Batik Air all competing for the tourist dollar and TK/SQ/TR/JQ/QF all offering flights to SIN for competitive Asian connections.
Yeah I’m with Tim. For the foreseeable future there will be demand for routes via Asia to Europe from Oz. A lot of capacity currently goes through the Middle East that will need a home.
50k AA miles and small taxes to fly in first class for 9 hours isn’t bad! I’ve done the Singapore Syd route a few times. On the old seat ugh.
the marginalization of the Middle East carriers is underway.
No matter how hard they try to frame it, having missiles land at DXB over and over again is bad for perception of the area.
Add in the the UK and Australia have logically very strong ties and this is an easy route to start even in good times and, as Ben notes, routing via KUL is an easy choice.
Curious - is this going to have the new BA hard product or the old skinny seats circa 2003
@ Mike -- By the time this launches, all 787-9s should have the new Club Suites, I expect.