Hot off the return of the eagerly awaited Perth to London direct services and the new first flights between Australia and Rome Qantas have finally come good on months of speculation about starting a direct service to Johannesburg in addition to also starting direct flights to the Indonesian capital Jakarta. Qantas will begin direct services to both destinations with South Africa’s largest city to be serviced three times weekly with a Airbus A330-200 aircraft with the relatively short haul international service up to Jakarta to be serviced with Boeing 737-800s . The former flight to be designated QF65 is scheduled to depart Perth at 15:00 every Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday for a straight-westerly 11-hour and 15-minute crossing over the Indian Ocean before landing at 20:15 on the same day. After a short turn around, the return flight designated QF66 will depart Johannesburg at 22:00 and take just under 10 hours on the east-bound run, landing at Perth at 13:55 the following afternoon. The Qantas A330 slated to service the route offers a 2-4-2 configuration in economy class and a 1-2-1 configured business class.
For those heading to the Indonesian capital QF53 will leave Perth at 19:05 every Wednesday, Friday, and Sunday from November 30 for the four-and-a-half-hour run up to CGK and will land at 22:35pm local time. The Return service QF54 will leave Jakarta at 23:55 that same evening and land in Perth at 05:10 the following morning. Qantas’s workhorse domestic Boeing 737 have 12 seats and 162 seats in a 2-2 and 3-3 configuration respectively. Both destinations are not new to Qantas with the carrier currently operating direct services from Sydney to both Johannesburg and Jakarta however will become first time Qantas destinations for Perth and will help to expand the airlines international network to 5 from Perth. South African Airways and Garuda Indonesia both serviced their respective routes from Perth prior to the outbreak of Covid 19 however with both carriers having no immediate plans to return to Australia Qantas is likely to enjoy exclusivity on the routes for quite some time to come.
It is important to acknowledge that both flights are being supported to some extent through the Western Australian Government’s AU$195 million Reconnect WA package. After quite some time of bickering relations between Qantas and Perth Airport over the airlines operating plans from Perth and continued exchanges over WA’s hard border closures the recent announcements mark quite a new turn in Qantas outlook for operating internationally from the west coast of Australia!
