"Passengers will be able to fly from London to Australia non-stop for the first time when airline Qantas launches its new service from March 2018.

Australia's national carrier says it will connect Perth, in the west of the country, to the UK capital using Boeing 787-9 Dreamliners.

The 9,000 mile (14,498km) flight will take 17 hours."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-38280722

Could you cope with being stuck on a plane for 17 hours? I don't think I could
Hope there will ne adequate toilet facities

Don't most visitors to Australia want to go to Sydney and the east coast? So for them it will still involve a change of flight at Perth. I don't mind the stops on long flights anyway - good to get the chance to stretch your legs.

It's not that much different from being stuck on a plane for 11 hours to go to West Coast USA.

Is it 17 hours in both directions?

When I went to Mexico I think the flight was 13 hours. After that, I guess I could manage an addition 4. Don't think I would enjoy it but it's more convenient that stopping over somewhere, unless you make the stop-over part of the holiday.

I could take 17 hours in first class,but not in economy. Ive never experienced 1st class before but you really need as much legroom as you can get at these durations.

A lot of people will think along the lines of, non-stop, no faffing about changing planes etc., got to be worth it, I think that I'd see it that way, but the one and only time that I went to Australia, to visit someone I knew in Brisbane, I went business class.
A few years back, B.A. were advertising, 'buy one business class seat, get a second one free'.
I asked my then main squeeze if she'd fancy going and she agreed.
I wouldn't swear to it, but I recall it being about £2700 for both of us.
We had flat bed side by side seats and were plied with good food and excellent wines both ways.
We flew to Singapore, stopped there for a couple of hours, enough time to get a hot shower, brush your teeth, and have a shave, nothing livens a man up better than a decent shower and shave.
Reboarding the plane, which had been thoroughly cleaned, we headed for Sydney, where we cleared immigration and hopped a Qantas flight, (business class again), for Brisbane, just regular wide leather seats on the internal flight though.
Personally, I don't think that I could have suffered the 22 hours sitting in the cheap seats, and the guy I knew in Brisbane has now left Australia for Germany, so I have no reason to go any more, so I won't be suffering 17 hours with the poor folks on the new non-stop flight.


I know what you mean, because of different flight paths, it is often 11 hours to L.A., and only 9, or 9 and a half coming back to London.
I wouldn't think that there'd be much difference on the Oz flight though, maybe 30-45 minutes, if anything.

I've done a fair few Long Hauls in my time. They are always knackering.

Not so much the flight, but all the prep and getting to the airport early and check-in and security and then the commute to accommodation at the other end.

An early Japan trip was 15 hours (with 2 hour stop in Moscow). But my home to hotel door to door experience was 36 hours.
And then our Host insisted on taking us to Dinner. Last thing we wanted.

As with all transatlantic flights, the west to east sectors are usually shorter due to the prevailing winds. In the days of shorter range aircraft, particularly piston engine types and the early jets, flights would often be non stop from New York to London, but London to New York required a refuelling stop at places like Shannon or Gander.

I always wondered why the flights were a bit quicker from the west.

My longest flight is about 10 hours. For a 17 hour flight I wouldn't even consider economy sounds like it would be hell! I'd need a few days to recover!

Two hours to Spain is more than enough for me

I really wish it worked the other way around. The west bound flights happen in the daytime so would be nice to be shorter. Eastbound is overnight usually so would be nice to get an extra hour of sleep. Damn that jet stream.

that's a long time to be stuck in a confined space with a load of Australians

The jetstream I believe.

When i flew to australia it was 28 hours there and 34 hours back that is literally halving the time of my return flight.

To the poster saying most people want to fly to SYdney, i flew to Perth because i wanted to. Perth (and Western Australia) is fabulous probably because the majority of the horrific drunken english people are getting pissed on the gold coast.

We did 15 hrs from St Ives to Lancaster a couple of years ago when a ton of road works combined with somebody threatening to jump off a bridge.
I was cursing them for being so bleedin selfish and then heard that they had ended their life that day so I felt a bit of a shit.

Yeah it's the seating that would worry me. I only rarely tend to fly to Europe these days (because of my fear of flying), and for such short trips, it doesn't bother me if the seats are a bit tight (I'm quite tall), but for 17 hours I think I'd be going slightly mad with discomfort. As others have said, I'd have to go business or first class to get more space.

i hard done nearly 15 hours non stop from Singapore. It's bearable with the right airline which has a decent economy service.

It you can do a daytime flight and arrive at bedtime it works ok - the overnights are the ones that take it out of you.

They used to say that about Fulham and Earl's Court.

I just did 16hrs from Tokyo (with 1 hour stop over in Finland). When I got back I went shopping and I was so tired I stumbled on the stairs in my supermarket.

Yes, they fly *in* it when going in the same direction (usually west to east but sections can be N-S, S-N or in between) and fly *around* it when going the other way - in both cases if the 'detour' isn't too long. North Atlantic air routes for example are organised daily and changed as necessary to minimise flight times in both directions, and to ensure separation when out of radar coverage.

I'm not sure how much benefit the London-Perth route will be for people travelling beyond Perth (most) but it may allow Qantas to shorten the stopover time and some people will prefer to stop there rather than say Singapore.

I'd hazard a guess that the Aussies, if they were aware that the plane may be half full of POMs, would opt for a cardboard canoe to go home in.


You must have had a few longish layovers, especially coming back.
I've been to Surfers Paradise on the Gold Coast, and didn't see any English drunks, or many Aussie ones either, but I take your point, they can make you ashamed of being English, they all have tattoos and broken noses, and some of the men can be just as bad.

no long layovers, just a couple of stops (abu dhabi and jakata) where you sit on the plane and new people get on that lasted an hour tops.

All up the east coast from sydney to surfers there would be specific bars/hostels etc where the ghastly made-you- ashamed -to-be-a-human people hung out, you learn to avoid them. They would say things like " i don't like australians i met one at home once" or "i don't see the point in going to ayer's rock it's just a rock"; they just all hang out together getting drunk never doing anything else, they might as well be in Bognor.

Including the time difference, take off from London at, say 8am and arrive in Perth at 9am the following day! Wonder how long it'll take to get over jetlag??

17 hours to do 9000 miles, one day we will all have a "SMASH" reaction to this.

i was fine i left at 10am and arrived just after midnight local time i went to sleep woke up the next morning and had no jet lag at all.

coming back in the other direction i couldn't sleep for about 36 hours for some reason though.