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British Airways has resumed services on its Kangaroo Route connecting London Heathrow and Sydney via Singapore on Monday, after halting the route for 719 days due to the pandemic.
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Using its fleet of Boeing 787 Dreamliner aircraft, the British flag carrier has officially resumed daily services between London and Sydney.
The first flight, BA15 from London to Singapore, operated by G-ZBKL, departed Heathrow on Sunday, 27 March just after 10:00pm local time.
The flight touched down at Singapore’s iconic Changi Airport at 5:58pm local time on Monday 28 March, after nearly 13 hours in the air.
The shorter second leg through to Sydney took off at 8:00pm, before travelling over 7 hours, and landing at 6:13am on Tuesday, 29 March, two days after departure from London.
British Airways announced the move last month, just days after the Australian federal government announced it would reopen to fully vaccinated tourists and visa holders from 21 February.
“We can’t wait to welcome our customers back on board our Sydney to London flights and we will be honoured to play our part in reuniting families and friends with their loved ones after such a long time apart,” said Noella Ferns, British Airways head of sales, Asia-Pacific.
“The safety of our customers and colleagues has always been at the heart of everything we do. We know some customers won’t have flown for a long time, and we can assure them we have a range of COVID-19 measures in place to provide stress and hassle-free travel.”
Meanwhile, rival Qantas announced earlier this month that it would soon reinstate flights to London from east coast cities via Singapore, as opposed to its current routing through Darwin, from 19 June using its fleet of refurbished Airbus A380s.
From the same day, the Flying Kangaroo will also reactivate its flights to the British capital via Perth.
However, it’s not yet known whether the two new services will spell the end of the current layover in Darwin, which Qantas has repeatedly hinted could remain in some capacity.
The news was confirmed by the business’ chief executive, Alan Joyce, in an interview with Executive Traveller on Sunday, and comes despite the airline announcing in January the timing of a return to the WA capital was “under review”.
Qantas halted all commercial international flights in late March 2020, and only resumed a limited service to London, via Darwin, when borders opened to citizens and residents in November last year.
