Qantas Airways announcement: three weekly Sydney-Perth-Rome Fiumicino connections from 22 June. Check the agreement with Ita Airways on flights to Italy and Europe
The first direct flight – and for now the only one – between Italy and Australia will take off in June. To confirm this in a note, the company Qantas Airways, which bets on the resumption of travel, announces three weekly connections Sydney-Perth-Rome Fiumicino starting from 22 June also to meet the demand for the next European summer season. The flights will be operated with the Boeing 787 Dreamliner with a configuration designed for ultra-long journeys and which will cut the duration by over three hours compared to the current ones. It is for now a seasonal connection, until October, explains al Corriere della Sera Qantas CEO Alan Joyce. The news, they explain to Courier service qualified sources, there would also be another novelty: the agreement between Qantas and Ita Airways on part of the flights through interline agreement (a couple of steps below the codeshare ones). Both carriers have not yet confirmed at the time of publication of the article.
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The role of Italy
The carrier believes it can also exploit the Italian capital as a hub to reach other destinations in the Mediterranean and Southern Europe. The pandemic is making non-stop flights between Australia and the rest of the world even more in demand as we learn to live with the virus and its variants, Joyce explains in an official statement. Italy for us is the largest market in continental Europe for people visiting families and friends from Australia and we think customers will love to fly directly to Rome to spend time with loved ones or enjoy Italy.
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The numbers
since 2018 that Qantas was thinking about a direct flight between Italy and Australia. During a chat with the Courier service three years ago CEO Joyce had confirmed that our country was in Qantas’ crosshairs. Not only for business volumes (4.6 billion euros of imports from Italy at the time), but also for our fellow countrymen who went to visit (for tourism, business or for relatives) who in ten years have gone from about 50 thousand to 75,500 (+ 51%). The press release explains that the flights will be operational until 6 October 2022 and that Qantas will offer – thanks to the codeshare agreement with Ita Airways – connections from Rome Fiumicino to 16 European destinations including Athens, Barcelona, Frankfurt, Nice, Madrid, Paris and another 15 Italian locations including Milan and Venice. Qantas belongs to the Oneworld alliance and Ita Airways for at least twelve months to SkyTeam.
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Distances
The distance that Qantas Boeing 787s will cover between Perth and Rome Fiumicino will be approximately 13,400 kilometers. Those who depart from Italy and intend to arrive in Sydney will have to make a stopover in Perth and then fly for another 3,300 kilometers. The schedule includes departures from Australia every Monday, Wednesday and Saturday, take-offs from Italy every Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday. Flight QF5 will take off from Sydney at 17.55 (local time), will stop in Perth to leave at 22.20 (local time), arriving in Rome at 8.45 in the morning the next day. Flight QF6 from Fiumicino will take off at 10.50 am to arrive in Perth at 8.35 am the next day and at 4.05 pm in Sydney.
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The type of aircraft
The Australian company is still trying to choose between Boeing and Airbus the planes that will have to make non-stop connections between Sydney and Europe, but it does not mean that it also uses these aircraft for Italy since a market with lower volumes than routes between Sydney and Paris or between Sydney and Frankfurt. In any case, the June-October 2022 flights seem to look more to customers who live in Australia also because at that time of the year there is winter and Covid restrictions are less for residents who want to go out than for foreigners.
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December 14, 2021 (change December 14, 2021 | 23:49)
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