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25th Mar 2018

The first scheduled non-stop Australia/Europe flight arrives in London after 17 hours

Alan Loughnane

Big news this morning…

The first scheduled non-stop flight between Australia and the UK has touched down in London’s Heathrow Airport.

Qantas 9 (QF9) landed at Heathrow’s Terminal 3 just after 5am, just over 17 hours after departing from Perth on Australia’s west coast.

The Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner completed the journey of 9,000 miles to land two minutes earlier than scheduled… now that’s what we call service.

Captained by Lisa Norman, it was also longest Boeing Dreamliner flight in the world and the first ever direct service between the continents.

The flight, carrying more than 200 passengers and 16 crew, departed from Perth at 6:49pm local time on Saturday.

To help to reduce the discomfort of such a long flight, the plane is equipped with added features for improved air quality and noise reduction.

Previous flights to and from Australia had a stopover in either Singapore or the Middle East, but removing the stopover has taken three hours off the flight time.

Qantas has an ambitious plan to launch even more ultra long flights between the two continents with plans to have flights from Europe to the east coast of Australia in the new future.

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