More than 1 in 5 seats on Qantas' much-vaunted first scheduled non-stop service between the UK and Australia are being left empty, amounting to 52 free spaces on each flight, analysis by Telegraph Travel has revealed. The Heathrow-Perth route launched in March to great fanfare, with Qantas fulfilling a decades-long ambition to run direct flights between Australia and the UK. The 8,991-mile service entered the record books as the second longest flight in the world and first ever non-stop passenger link between the two countries. But according to data released by the CAA, the flights have been departing only 78.1% full, on average, since the route was launched While demand is not what it might be for the record-breaking flight, that load factor of 78.1% is not too far below Qantas’s overall average, which for 2017 was 80.6%. <br/>