Qantas has just announced a new seasonal ultra long haul flight, which will only be the carrier’s second destination in Europe.
In this post:
Qantas launching flights to Rome, Italy
Between June 22 and October 6, 2022, Qantas will operate a new service from Sydney to Rome via Perth, intended to meet demand over the European holiday peak season. The flight will operate 3x weekly with the following schedule:
QF5 Sydney to Perth departing 5:55PM arriving 8:50PM
QF5 Perth to Rome departing 10:20PM arriving 8:45AM (+1 day)
QF6 Rome to Perth departing 10:50AM arriving 8:35AM (+1 day)
QF6 Perth to Sydney departing 10:05AM arriving 4:05PM
The westbound flight will operate on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Saturdays, while the eastbound flight will operate on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Sundays. The entire journey will cover a distance of 10,338 miles in each direction, with the long haul flight covering a distance of 8,298 miles. The long haul flight is blocked at 16hr25min westbound and 15hr45min eastbound.
The new flight will operate using a Boeing 787-9, and will cut over three hours off the current fastest travel time to Rome. Qantas will also operate double daily flights between Perth and London next summer, so travelers could choose to fly into or out of Rome in one direction, and into or out of London in the other direction.
As Qantas CEO Alan Joyce describes this new service:
“We’ve seen amazing demand on our direct service from Perth to London and on our new services to Delhi from Melbourne and Sydney. These are exciting destinations and there’s strong evidence the pandemic is making non-stop flights between Australia and the rest of world even more desirable as we learn to live with the virus and its variants,” said Mr Joyce.
Italy is the largest market for us in continental Europe for people visiting family and friends from Australia and we think customers will love flying direct to one of the world’s great cities to spend time with loved ones or enjoy Italy. After the restrictions of the past few years, it’s the ideal time to reinvigorate our international network and we’ll continue to look for new opportunities.”
It seems pretty clear that this is targeted at Australians looking to travel to Europe, rather than Europeans looking to travel to Australia:
- Australia’s borders still aren’t fully open — Australians can finally leave the country, in some cases without quarantine, but Australia still isn’t welcoming visitors
- This route is being operated during the peak travel period for Europe, rather than during the peak travel period for Australia (since it’s winter in Australia then)
- It’s fascinating in general to see an ultra long haul flight operated primarily around leisure demand, since that’s not something we’ve historically often seen; then again, that’s kind of the reality nowadays
The Rome inaugural flight will be a “Points Plane”
Here’s something that miles & points geeks will love. Flights become bookable as of today, and Qantas will operate the first flight as a “Points Plane.” The idea is that every seat in every cabin will be available as an award seat at the lowest cost. The catch is that this is only available for those booking through Qantas’ own frequent flyer program, rather than those booking through partner frequent flyer programs.
This will apply to the inaugural June 22 flight to Rome, as well as the inaugural June 23 flight from Rome.
This isn’t the first time that Qantas has operated a flight like this — back in 2019, the airline offered an Airbus A380 “Points Plane,” which sure was cool.
Bottom line
In mid-2022, Qantas will operate a new nonstop flight between Perth and Rome. This service is intended to offer Australians a direct way to get to Italy for a holiday, which many people will no doubt be interested in after borders were closed for so long.
Qantas flying nonstop from Australia to London is still a fairly new concept, as the airline launched Perth to London flights a few years back. I’m not surprised to see this route added, though if anything I would have expected a Perth to Paris flight before a Perth to Rome flight.
What do you make of Qantas’ new flight to Rome?
Remember the glory days before little Alan Joyce took over the helm? When QANTAS lived up to its old slogan - 'QANTAS - Australia's world airline', and actually flew to mainland European destinations (e.g. Rome, Paris, Frankfurt, Athens....etc etc). Pepperidge Farm remembers...
Interesting that it’s mentioned that the flight will operate “direct” I wonder where that stop will be or perhaps non- stop is what he means ?
Technically it's both. It's a non-stop Perth-Rome flight, but the flight originates in Sydney so it's Sydney-Rome direct.
This a return to Rome isn’t it? I think QF flew there many years ago. Not sure when it was stopped though.
Yes, QF flew there until 2003.
Qantas chooses to fly to Rome because in Australia there is a huge community with italian ancestry that fly frequently to Italy for holiday to meet their (distant) relatives.
Paris is a important tourist destination but nothing more...
Lol. Good luck with this. I truly do feel sorry for Qantas. Trying to operate an international airline out of Covid-hyper-panicked Australia is no easy task. At this point the new route is simply a wish list tbh.
Lol. We're doing just fine down here, thanks.
Also, the demand to travel has never been higher. But thanks for your concern.
We're doing just fine down here without your sympathy mate, had to give up a few freedoms here and there, but glad to have done so to save an immense number of lives until the vaccines started flowing. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Strange - particularly now that Italy is a US category 4 - do not travel.
Same for the expanded AA flight to Paris on 77W - from JFK to CDG. Why expand if France is a US Cat 4 - do not travel destination?
Perhaps Qantas used the Australian government travel warming level, which is currently 'Exercise a high degree of caution', not one of the two higher levels that recommend against travel. Or perhaps the threat level today, six months before the flights begin was not considered at all.
You do realise Australia is not the US right? and that the launch date is 6 months from now?
Australia is welcoming visitors (without quarantine) from Korea, Japan and Singapore with h no restrictions other than vaccination and a pre-flight test.
For everywhere else right now family of Australia citizens and permanent residents can visit. Students and other new temporary visa holders can enter as well.
So not fully closed to visitors, but far from fully open. There's been no formal announcement but the underlying reason as to why Japan , Korea...
Australia is welcoming visitors (without quarantine) from Korea, Japan and Singapore with h no restrictions other than vaccination and a pre-flight test.
For everywhere else right now family of Australia citizens and permanent residents can visit. Students and other new temporary visa holders can enter as well.
So not fully closed to visitors, but far from fully open. There's been no formal announcement but the underlying reason as to why Japan , Korea and singapore people get to come is they have vaccination rates higher than Australia, and we have very high rates, finally . (other than diplomacy reasons, we just had the korean president here and bought some artillery)
I suspect that for the next year more countries will join the list but it will be based on vaccination rates.
Actually I am wondering if italy might be next on the list for visitors. Their Vax rate is only a percent or two behind Australia, although harder to open to one EU country and not others.
Wasn't 72 hours of quarantine added back? And I think currently it's only NSW and Victoria and there are a number of post arrival tests as well. In the case of Singapore it seemed to be reciprocal for Australia being added as a VTL country. I would expect all these restrictions to be lifted by next summer but may be a long time before tourists feel confident Australia won't suddenly impose new restrictions.
I'd expect that quarantine will end before the end of this summer, and can't see any way that it'll still be there in 12 months. At the moment people can quarantine at home, something that's not much of an issue as inbound travellers are almost exclusively Australian.
Love it!!!!! As someone who lives in Perth I look forward to taking this flight!
As the CEO hinted at in the quote, Italians make up the 4th largest ancestry demographic in Australia. Way more potential VFR traffic than Paris would have
I'm guessing that Qantas has put on this route as a seasonal thing for 2022. If it proves to be wildly popular they may amp up frequency.
Paris is no doubt still on the agenda (I hope!) and subject to necessary approvals, aircraft and crewing availability, may happen later in 2022.
As to 'points planes', this is prudent book-keeping as it will reduce the Liabilities ledger somewhat. As any QFF member knows, six-figure...
I'm guessing that Qantas has put on this route as a seasonal thing for 2022. If it proves to be wildly popular they may amp up frequency.
Paris is no doubt still on the agenda (I hope!) and subject to necessary approvals, aircraft and crewing availability, may happen later in 2022.
As to 'points planes', this is prudent book-keeping as it will reduce the Liabilities ledger somewhat. As any QFF member knows, six-figure amounts of points are demanded to get you any distance out from Australia. And let's not overlook the additional 'carrier imposed charges' at a level BA would approve of!
Australians are a growing cruise demographic and Civitavecchia is a major port of embarkation. I wouldnt be surprised if a fair amount of this capacity was pre-sold through cruise line contracts.
Fabulous idea, we are checking out the seats now….we live in Darwin so flying via Perth is no big deal .Before Covid we were travelling to Milan twice a year. Rome is 3 hours from Milan by train! Well done Qantas!
What a surprise! QF had all along been yapping about Paris and Frankfurt and i honestly expected one of those to launch first. Very intreresting.
PER-FCO is slightly shorter than PER-CDG/FRA. Prob for the operational concerns, as well as the leisure focus.
FRA is much more of a business destination, not a leisure market, and business travel is very much muted and likely to remain that way for some time. Aussies are keen to get out of the country and it makes sense for QF to add a pure leisure route particularly when travel to Asia is down significantly and likely to remain so for a while.