Qantas will continue to run direct daily flights between Darwin and London until at least the end of June amid ongoing uncertainty about the reopening of the border to Western Australia.
The route from Darwin to London was established in November last year when international travel resumed but WA remained closed, eliminating the airline's Perth to London service.
Qantas was due to resume flights from Perth to London in April, but the WA government has still not confirmed when it will reopen its borders.
Qantas chief executive Alan Joyce said the extension of its "kangaroo route" to London via Darwin gave the Top End time to "properly leverage" the reopening of Australia's borders to tourists.
"It's a great opportunity to encourage thousands of visitors to stop off in Darwin to see what the NT has to offer," he said.
Australia is preparing to open its borders to international travellers from February 21.
From then on, all fully vaccinated visa holders will be able to travel to Australia without a travel exemption.
Unvaccinated visa holders, however, will still need a valid travel exemption to enter the country.
Qantas will continue to operate the Sydney to London flight via Darwin instead of through Singapore until June.
In a statement the airline said testing requirements in Singapore were also a factor in the decision to maintain the Darwin connection instead.
The airline currently operates daily flights from both Melbourne and Sydney to London via Darwin on its 787 Dreamliner.
New aircraft base to deliver economic boost
As part of the same announcement, the NT government said it had struck a deal with Qantas to deliver a new aircraft base in Darwin for the airline's Embraer 190 domestic aircraft.
Mr Joyce said basing the smaller aircraft in Darwin would make it easier for tourists arriving in the Top End to get flights to Alice Springs, and boost tourism in Central Australia.
The project promises to deliver up to 200 new jobs, including pilots, cabin crew and aircraft maintenance roles.
The NT government has announced it will invest up to $3.6 million in training and marketing, plus incentives to attract workers to move to the NT.
Qantas plans to launch E190 routes by the end of March this year, including:
- Adelaide - Alice Springs - Darwin
- Canberra - Darwin
- Cairns - Darwin
- Townsville - Darwin
Additional flight routes are expected later this year.
Regular flights to Timor-Leste made permanent
The weekly Qantas route to Timor-Leste, which opened in February 2021, will now become permanent, with three flights between Darwin and Dili per week, increasing to five flights a week from July.
NT Chief Minister Michael Gunner hailed the route as an "extremely exciting connection that will bolster our case for seeing more frequent flights out of Darwin."
"We can't forget our friends to the north and our close connections to hundreds of millions of people, especially Timor-Leste [and] the ties of blood and family that go that way," he said.
Timor-Leste's foreign minister Adaljiza AXR Magno said the new regular Qantas flights presented a "big opportunity for Timor-Leste to promote [ourselves] as a tourism destination".
"Many Timorese people go to London to look for jobs," she added.
However, Mr Joyce said it was unlikely the Darwin to London route would continue after WA reopened its borders.
"The dilemma we have… is that Perth has maybe 2 million people and Darwin has 150,000 people. So the demand you get out of Perth to London and back for business, for tourism, for visiting friends and relatives, is bigger," he said.
