Direct flights from Britain to Australia could be confirmed within weeks

[xxMATTGxx]

Nice to see the Boeing 787 opening more of these new routes that weren't done before hand. Going to be a long one for sure!

The stop over are good to have a good streach and walk around though. All depends on ticket cost I suppose.

[Firehorse]

Scoot airlines is also introducing a direct flight between Melbourne and Athens. Don't know if I'd want to be on a plane for so long! Prefer to stop over to stretch the legs!

If there's plenty of demand for these flights, it could certainly knock down the ticket prices. Much more efficient if you can stay in the air the entire way and don't need to waste all that extra fuel taking off from a halfway point, not to mention all the associated fees that come with landing at an airport becoming avoidable.

[Matt]

I actually don't mind the stopovers, especially on long haul flights. Means I can walk around a bit and stretch my legs. It's not like the flight will be any quicker, will it? Yeah it's convenient but I've done the trip from Perth > London London > Perth about 5 or 6 times and never missed a connection. Depends who you fly with really.

I'll be very interested to see the price they put on it. Would definitely put Qantas ahead of other airlines.

[Firehorse]

I actually don't mind the stopovers, especially on long haul flights. Means I can walk around a bit and stretch my legs. It's not like the flight will be any quicker, will it? Yeah it's convenient but I've done the trip from Perth > London London > Perth about 5 or 6 times and never missed a connection. Depends who you fly with really.

I'll be very interested to see the price they put on it. Would definitely put Qantas ahead of other airlines.

You'll probably shave about 4 hours off the average flight from Australia to the UK by not having a stopover. You don't just lose however many hours you have to wait between flights for bags to be transferred or the plane to be refuelled, but the route would be more direct (not adding an hour for each leg to fly via a hub like Hong Kong), and you would lose all that time needed for the landing and take-off procedure. I'd still probably want to stretch my legs after about 10 hours though.

[AgnesIO]

Scoot airlines is also introducing a direct flight between Melbourne and Athens. Don't know if I'd want to be on a plane for so long! Prefer to stop over to stretch the legs!

If there's plenty of demand for these flights, it could certainly knock down the ticket prices. Much more efficient if you can stay in the air the entire way and don't need to waste all that extra fuel taking off from a halfway point, not to mention all the associated fees that come with landing at an airport becoming avoidable.

It makes economic sense for most airlines to have stopovers, though. Hence why the Middle East airlines operate almost all of their flights with stopovers in their respective hubs

[Matt]

I'd still probably want to stretch my legs after about 10 hours though.

We last did the trip in 2014 and flew via Jakarta. From Jakarta to Amsterdam it was 14 hours and that's by far the longest long-haul flight I've been on. Now that I'm older I tend to just sleep which isn't so bad, but still that went for ages. We only had 45 mins in Amsterdam and even then that was such a relief (although the flight to Gatwick was only like 50 minutes or something).

We're flying again this December with Emirates and we haven't been with them for a while.

My tummy goes weird after 10+ hours on a plane

[Firehorse]

It makes economic sense for most airlines to have stopovers, though. Hence why the Middle East airlines operate almost all of their flights with stopovers in their respective hubs

Not always:

[AgnesIO]

Not always:

Good video, although some of the points back up mine. Also, there is a reason I said most - and my point is true for most of the world's largest airlines. That is (as the video highlights) potentially changing over time, and is obviously demand dependent.

I fly one of the low demand direct routes that video highlighted at least four times a year, if not more. The price to fly direct for flights I have just booked is £570. I booked mine for £440 - and could have paid as little as £370, but prefer to use the same airline.

That's a difference of up to £200 per person - which for the average traveller is a huge difference.

The model that is currently still most popular is to have the huge fuselage's fly to the main hub, and then split to different destinations.

[Firehorse]

Good video, although some of the points back up mine. Also, there is a reason I said most - and my point is true for most of the world's largest airlines. That is (as the video highlights) potentially changing over time, and is obviously demand dependent.

I fly one of the low demand direct routes that video highlighted at least four times a year, if not more. The price to fly direct for flights I have just booked is £570. I booked mine for £440 - and could have paid as little as £370, but prefer to use the same airline.

That's a difference of up to £200 per person - which for the average traveller is a huge difference.

The model that is currently still most popular is to have the huge fuselage's fly to the main hub, and then split to different destinations.

So what exactly are you trying to say here? You're talking about prices and saying you paid a certain amount less than another figure but haven't given the context. I'm assuming your booking has a stopover and the price difference is what you're trying to highlight?

The direct flight is more expensive because demand is lower and therefore for the flight to break even the seats that do get sold have to cover the operating costs for the seats that do not get sold. It's a balancing act between price per seat and people per aircraft. As an airline you decide between flying a larger, half empty aircraft at a higher price per seat, or sending passengers via a hub in a smaller aircraft where you can more easily guarantee a return on investment as well as be more competitively priced.

The new development here is that airlines no longer have to gamble on whether to fly a big aircraft (which might not be fully booked, hence the higher prices for a plane less full) from a smaller destination, or to send passengers on smaller aircraft via a hub (again when the planes are full they are making a profit). These newer aircraft remove that dilemma. They are smaller, meaning they are easier to fill up, and they are much more fuel efficient which allows them to travel the distances that only the bigger planes could previously achieve.

This is still very new. As in last year or two new, and still in the very early stages of emergence. Of course the hub and spoke model is mostly cheaper at the moment as these new aircraft like the 787 dreamliner are still quite rare, and airlines are not going to just ditch all their other very expensive aircraft in an instant, the process of change takes years. The bigger planes will definitely still operate on the high demand routes, but a lot of that demand will be removed as it becomes unnecessary to route journeys via a hub for business to be viable or competitive. This is exactly the reason the Airbus A380 has had such poor sales figures recently and has even seen major airlines failing to renew their leases on the aircraft.