Many, as has been pointed out numerous times in this and other threads.
We are happy to fly 2 stops to UK/EU
It has actually been relatively unusual for us to fly one stop to our European destination
I think people here need to acknowledge that the amount of people on AFF happy flying two-stop to Europe in J/F is severely disproportionate to the amount of people actually doing this in the Australia-Europe corridor, which as you know comprises frequent and infrequent travellers in all four classes in both directions
When you look at the whole Australia-Europe corridor, how many people fly these exotic two-stop/RTW routings to Europe? 1%? These two-stops are for leisure purposes (no longer the norm) and go against the idea of A-to-B travel when we have improved technology.
Qantas axed its 5 stop Sydney-Singapore-Calcutta-Karachi-Cairo-Rome-London 707 service when improved technology (747-200B) allowed for the route to be flown in only two stops, and consumers adopted that as the norm.
Qantas axed its 2 stop Sydney-Singapore-Bahrain-London 747-200B service when improved technology (747-400) allowed for one stop Sydney-Singapore-London, and consumers adopted that as the norm.
So I fully expect consumers to adopt Sunrise as the norm for people travelling to major European cities. Perth residents have embraced QF9 as the norm to get to LHR, and vice versa. I expect SYD-SIN-LHR to remain, probably on a standard A350, but it could be repositioned purely into a revenue service tapping into the Asian market, similar EK's DXB-SIN-MEL service, as opposed to a fuel stop. And as other people have pointed out, PER is also likely to remain as it's similar to Australians visiting California (business, tourist
and transit destination) before travelling to the eastern USA, fundamentally different to a transit-oriented stopover in a different country. So it's all in Qantas' favour I think.
Actually, there are quite a few 'niche markets' serviced
You completely misunderstood the statement. I was saying that the
Adelaide-Sofia corridor is an extremely niche market, with a estimated maximum of four people travelling that route every year.