Qantas will stop flying to Heathrow via Dubai after the Australian carrier agreed a five-year extension to its alliance with Emirates.
The Sydney-based airline will instead reroute its daily Sydney-Heathrow service through Singapore rather than Dubai from March 25, 2018.
Qantas has already announced that its daily Melbourne-Dubai-Heathrow route will be replaced by a Melbourne-Perth-Heathrow service from March 24 next year.
The Australian airline first started operating its European services via Dubai in 2013 after signing its original five-year alliance with Emirates.
Qantas Group’s CEO Alan Joyce said: “Our partnership has evolved to a point where Qantas no longer needs to fly its own aircraft through Dubai, and that means we can redirect some of our A380 flying into Singapore and meet the strong demand we’re seeing in Asia.
“Improvements in aircraft technology mean the Qantas network will eventually feature a handful of direct routes between Australia and Europe, but this will never overtake the sheer number of destinations served by Emirates and that’s why Dubai will remain an important hub for our customers.”
As part of the shake-up, Qantas will also upgrade one of its daily Melbourne-Singapore flights from an Airbus A330 to an A380.
Qantas added that those needing to travel between Australia and Dubai will “remain well served” by Emirates’ 77 weekly flights between the emirate and five Australian cities - Adelaide, Brisbane, Melbourne, Perth and Sydney.
Emirates president Tim Clark added: ““Emirates has worked with Qantas on these network changes. We see an opportunity to offer customers an even stronger product proposition for travel to Dubai, and onward connectivity to our extensive network in Europe, Middle East and Africa. We will announce updates in the coming weeks.”