Tuesday 24 May 2022 06:52 AM Qantas FINALLY gets its flagship route form Perth to London back up and running trends now
One of Qantas' most popular routes between Perth and London is finally back, two years after Covid border closures forced its indefinite closure.
Qantas flight QF9, a Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner with 236 passengers on board, landed at Heathrow Airport on Tuesday morning, local time, after 17 hours in the air - one of the world's longest commercial routes.
The Perth to London service was halted in early 2020 amid the Covid outbreak and was slower to return than other similar routes thanks to Western Australia's strict border laws.
The airline is also gearing up to establish a QF5 direct route between Perth and Rome, with the first flight scheduled for June 22.
Qantas flight QF9 with 236 passengers left Perth for Londonon Monday night, marking a return of one of the world's longest commercial air routes
Qantas celebrated the return of its flagship Perth to London route on Tuesday (pictured)
'With one of our flagship London routes heading back to Perth and the Rome take-off just around the corner, it's clear that Western Australia is back on the international travel map,' a Qantas spokesperson said.
Western Australia's border delay frustrated many who were locked out of the state but it enraged Qantas boss Alan Joyce when Premier Mark McGowan backflipped on a February 5 lifting of border restrictions over concerns about the Omicron variant.
'There isn't a plan for when that's going to open up. It's starting to look like North Korea,' Mr Joyce told 3AW Radio a day before the cancelled re-opening.
'We're supposed to all be Australians, but you can't even travel around your own country,' he said
'The fact that we can travel to London but we can't travel to Perth, I think there's something fundamentally wrong with the federation.'
Australians could finally enter WA quarantine-free after restrictions were lifted on in March (pictured: soccer star Kosuke Ota of the Glory and his family register their arrival into WA on flight on March 3)
Mark McGowan previously declared he'd be 'turning Western Australia into an island within an island, our own country' when he shut the border on April 5 2020.
He later promised to open once 90 per cent of the state was vaccinated but instead said it would be 'reckless and irresponsible' to do so with the emergence of Omicron.
WA's hard border eventually crumbled on March 4, 2022, to the joy of many reunited families.
Then opposition leader and new Prime Minister Anthony Albanese was on the first plane into Perth, having been criticised for leaving NSW as the state was smashed by record floods.
'I want to represent the whole country. I make no apologies for keeping my
