New Aircraft for Perth-Melbourne Route

Qantas today announced it would replace its Boeing 747-300 aircraft on the Perth-Melbourne route with brand new Airbus A330-200 aircraft from today.

Qantas Regional General Manager Western Australia, Mr Ian Gay, said 13 out of 48 weekly return Perth-Melbourne services would be operated by the new aircraft. A further 10 return services each week would be upgraded from B737-400 to B767-300 aircraft.

“The new A330-200 aircraft will be dedicated to Perth services and will enable us to offer our West Australian customers greater reliability when travelling to the east coast.

“We will be closely monitoring demand for services over the coming months, with the intention of increasing frequencies on the route late this year.” Mr Gay also said schedule adjustments would enable the airline to offer a 6:40pm Melbourne-Perth service six days a week from today. This service previously departed at 7:40pm, and the new time will offer Perth business travellers an earlier departure from Melbourne.

Qantas will also gradually retire its older B747-300 aircraft from the Perth-Sydney route from September this year and replace them with Airbus A330-200 aircraft.

Qantas recently added extra services from Perth to the mining destinations of Newman and Port Hedland and upgraded services between Perth and Kalgoorlie and Karratha to larger aircraft.

Qantas operates 321 domestic return services from Perth each week.