Qantas will switch its seasonal Sydney-Vancouver route from a Boeing 747 to a Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner service from next summer.
Qantas traditionally operates a 3x weekly service from Sydney to Vancouver over December and January. But next summer, the route will operate for an extra month, running from 12 December 2020 until 27 February 2021. The route takes advantage of demand from Australians travelling to Canada for the ski season, as well as Canadians escaping the northern winter for the sun and beaches of Australia.
The thrice-weekly Qantas Boeing 787-9 service from Sydney to Vancouver will operate next season on Mondays, Thursdays & Saturdays with the following schedule:
- QF75 Sydney (SYD) 20:15 – Vancouver (YVR) 15:05
- QF76 Vancouver (YVR) 20:00 – Sydney (SYD) 06:10 (+2 days)
Flights are now on sale, but at the time of writing, we couldn’t find any Qantas award availability on this route.
The Qantas Dreamliner features Economy, Premium Economy and Business seating. Although nobody outside of Qantas would call the Boeing 787 Business class product “mini First class”, it is a substantial improvement over Qantas’ Boeing 747 Business class seats. For Economy passengers, however, the updated in-flight entertainment system and extra legroom offered by the Boeing 787 may not be enough to compensate for the extremely narrow seats.
Air Canada flies year-round from Sydney and Brisbane to Vancouver, and seasonally from Melbourne to Vancouver, using Boeing 787s.
The remaining five Boeing 747s in the Qantas fleet are all due to be retired by early 2021. With the Sydney-Vancouver route switching to a Boeing 787, that leaves just two Boeing 747 routes for which Qantas has not announced a replacement aircraft: Sydney-Tokyo and Sydney-Johannesburg.
Given the restrictions that apply to A380 operations at Tokyo’s Haneda Airport, and the ETOPS limitations that would apply to twin-engine aircraft flying from Australia to South Africa, it’s quite likely that Sydney-Haneda will eventually become a Boeing 787-9 service and Sydney-Johannesburg will switch to an A380 route. However, Qantas has not yet announced its plans to the public.
Qantas’ Sydney-Santiago route, currently served four times per week by a Boeing 747, will switch to a daily Boeing 787-9 service in June.
Really good news! bad luck that qantas have not yet released any award points seating. Qantas probably won’t due to the popularity of the direct flights to Vancouver.
Why can SYD-SCL be a 787 but SYD-JNB can’t?
SYD-JNB could theoretically be operated by a Boeing 787. But because the SYD-JNB route tracks further away from possible diversion points than SYD-SCL (especially on the outbound QF63 sector, which typically tracks further south to avoid strong headwinds), the flight path may have to be altered under current ETOPS rules resulting in a longer travel time and higher fuel costs. This is one of the main reasons Virgin Australia’s attempt at MEL-JNB with a Boeing 777 failed. With the SYD-SCL route, there are more possibilities to divert closer to the flight path (e.g. to places like CHC or, depending on… Read more »