British travellers may be heading for Australia via Paris as Qantas launches five flights a week from the French capital to Sydney.
The move comes as one-way flights from London to Perth in economy class soar to almost £2,000.
Since the start of the Iran conflict – and subsequent shutdown of airspace in much of the Gulf – the previous aviation superhighway from the UK via the Middle East to Australia has been drastically reduced.
Immediately after Israel and the US attacked Iran on 28 February, Tehran retaliated with missile and drone strikes on infrastructure in the Gulf states, including airports and hotels.
Initially all flights from the key Middle East hubs of Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Doha were grounded. While Emirates is gradually rebuilding its network, and Etihad is slowly increasing its services, Qatar Airways is operating only a small fraction of its pre-war schedule.
In addition, the UAE and Qatar are on the Foreign Office no-go list, even for passengers who are simply changing planes.
The aviation blog Analytic Flying calculated that Emirates, Etihad and Qatar Airways – the “ME3” – represent more than half of the Europe-Australia market in normal times.
The blog reported: “With the ME3 running a skeleton operation with very little connecting traffic passing through their hubs, and passengers showing significant risk aversion to flying through Abu Dhabi, Doha and Dubai, there’s a significant capacity crunch occurring.”
As a result, airlines that avoid the Gulf are seeing passengers prepared to pay unprecedented high fares. On many dates in early April, Qantas’s daily London-Perth non-stop flight is selling for £1,996 one way in economy.
Now the carrier has announced a dramatic expansion in flights between Europe and Australia – with capacity freed up by shuffling its fleet.
Currently, Qantas flies from Sydney via Perth to Paris CDG three times a week. This will increase to five weekly, with a stop in Singapore rather than Perth. At present there is a “payload restriction” that prevents Qantas from selling every seat on the flight from Perth to Paris. Switching the refuelling location to Singapore reduces the distance by over 2,000 miles and allows an extra 60 passengers to travel.
The Perth-Rome link goes daily, a rise from four per week. In total, an extra 400 seats per day will be available on Qantas between Europe and Australia – a jumbo jet’s worth of capacity.
Travellers between the United Kingdom and Australia will be able to transfer in the French or Italian capitals. Airlines and agents will be marketing connecting flights from numerous UK departure points, particularly on Air France.
Those who travel to Paris or Rome on a separate flight on one of the budget airlines will be able to avoid air passenger duty (APD) of £106.
But they take the risk of a missed connection. In addition, Ryanair does not serve the key hub of Paris CDG – and most of its flights from the UK to Rome serve Ciampino airport rather than the Qantas venue, Fiumicino.
The new routes will allow Qantas to cash in on demand from passengers keen to avoid the Gulf. The aircraft to be used on the expanded services are Boeing 787 “Dreamliners” previously deployed on trans-Pacific routes.
Airbus A330 aircraft, currently used for domestic services, will be used to replace them. In turn, Boeing 737 aircraft are being deployed instead of A330s on intra-Australia links, which helps Qantas to reduce the fuel burn.
The current London-Perth flight continues as normal, but the inbound service is obliged to stop at Singapore to refuel.
Other airlines are increasing services between London and Asian destinations, with connections to Australia. From July, Singapore Airlines will add a second daily departure from Gatwick to its hub.
In January 2027, British Airways will resume flights from Heathrow to Melbourne, stopping in Kuala Lumpur.
The aviation analyst Sean Moulton said: “Qantas and British Airways are expanding flights in the market – demonstrating more and more options to avoid the Middle East.”
“There’s been a strong demand for European carriers to launch flights to Australia. Turkish Airlines recently launched Melbourne and Sydney, Finnair are launching Melbourne via Bangkok in October 2026 with daily flights.”
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