Qantas has reentered the French market after a 20-year hiatus, expanding its European network to three destinations.
The new nonstop service connecting Perth Airport (PER) and Paris Charles de Gaulle Airport (CDG) will initially operate four times per week during the Olympic Games, then transition to three flights per week from mid-August. The route will use 236-seat Boeing 787-9 aircraft.
“In recent years we have seen a significant increase in customers wanting to fly direct on long-haul routes and avoiding stopovers wherever possible,” said Qantas Group CEO Vanessa Hudson. “Our direct flights from Perth to London and Rome have some of the highest customer satisfaction on our international network.”
With a 17-hr. 20-min. flight time, the PER-CDG service spans 8,864 mi., making it the third-longest route in Qantas’ network, after Perth to London Heathrow (LHR) and Melbourne to Dallas-Fort Worth. Perth also becomes the farthest destination served nonstop from Paris, surpassing Air France’s 7,247-mi. route from CDG to Santiago, Chile.
Qantas last flew to Paris between October 2002 and October 2004, operating a one-stop route between PER and CDG via Singapore Changi Airport. However, France has remained absent from the Oneworld alliance member’s network since then.
The launch of the Paris route comes a month after Qantas gained clearance from European regulators for a third center fuel tank in the Airbus A350-1000s that will operate the airline’s ultra-long-range Project Sunrise flights. Project Sunrise aims to operate record-breaking flights, starting with routes from Sydney to London and New York, beginning in mid-2026.
Additionally, in late May, Qantas and PER reached a multi-billion-dollar agreement for a new terminal and runway, positioning the Western Australia airport to become the airline’s second-largest international gateway after Sydney.
Under the 12-year deal, PER will invest around A$3 billion ($2 billion) in new terminal facilities and a parallel runway as part of a wider A$5 billion investment program that also includes parking lots, transport infrastructure and a hotel. The move ended a long-running dispute between Qantas and the airport over fees and capital costs that ended up in the Supreme Court of Western Australia.
On July 12, PER reported its highest-ever annual passenger numbers in the year to June 30, breaking the 16-million mark for the first time. This outstripped the previous record figure of 14.9 million in fiscal 2013-14. “We have added more than 10 million passengers since [fiscal 2021] and in doing so have easily broken a record that has stood for a decade,” PER CEO Jason Waters says.
With the launch of PER-CDG, there are now three nonstop routes operating between Australia and Europe, with Qantas also flying daily from PER to LHR and three times per week from PER to Rome Fiumicino Airport.
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