The new link is timed to connect West Australian travellers to the airline’s USA, Canada and Argentina flights when it begins operating on December 11, 2015.
The airline is lobbying for an increase in air traffic rights which will give it the option of daily flights to Sydney and Melbourne as well as servicing Brisbane and Perth.
From June 26, 2015, the airline will operate five-weekly services between Perth and Singapore, with Boeing 737 aircraft, offering a total of almost 1,700 seats between the two cities.
Under the revised air services agreement, both countries’ carriers will immediately be able to operate 26,500 seats a week between Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou to the major gateway cities of Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Perth – an increase of 18 percent on the routes.
The deployment of the Super Jumbo will take effect from May 1, 2015 and will mean that alongside its partner Qantas, a total of seven daily A380 services will operate from Dubai to Australia from next summer.
Qatar Airways will boost capacity on routes from Doha’s Hamad International Airport to Madrid and Perth through increased frequencies on the route to Europe and the permanent deployment of a larger capacity airliner on the Australian link.
Air New Zealand and All Nippon Airways will both introduce flights with the Boeing 787-9 early next month, with Etihad Airways, Scoot, United Airlines and Virgin Atlantic Airways also due to the fly the new stretched variant of the Dreamliner before the end of the year.
The Star Alliance member has eight Dreamliners on order, all to be leased from International Lease Finance Corporation (ILFC). This includes six 787-8s due from this year (four in 2014 and two in 2015) and two of larger 787-9s, which will follow in 2017.