Qantas shifts transit point for daily Sydney-London A380 service back to Singapore

Qantas will return to flying its flagship Sydney-London route via Singapore rather than Dubai from Mar 25 next year, it announced on Thursday. Qantas flights from Australia to London and Europe via Singapore were dropped five years ago when the airline began its alliance with Middle Eastern carrier Emirates and re-routed these flights to Dubai. Australia's largest airline announced that it would be extending its partnership with Emirates for another five years but would be making changes to shift capacity to the fast-growing Asia market. "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," Qantas CEO Alan Joyce said. The service flying from Sydney to London via Singapore will replace one of the existing Sydney-Singapore A330 services, while the second Sydney-Singapore daily service continues to be operated by an A330 aircraft. Qantas will also upgrade one existing daily Melbourne-Singapore flight from an A330 to an A380 from Mar 25 next year, with a second thrice-weekly Melbourne-Singapore service increased to a daily A330 service, the airline said. Meanwhile, Qantas’ existing Melbourne-Dubai-London service will be replaced with its Dreamliner service flying Melbourne-Perth-London, it added.<br/>