17 hours! Qantas makes history with Australia-Europe flight

Associated Press

Show Caption Hide Caption Qantas makes history on Australia-UK flight Australia's first direct flight to Britain took off on Sunday from the western city of Perth, cutting flying time roughly three hours by skipping stopovers in Singapore or the Middle East, Qantas officials said. Scarlett Cvitanovich reports. Video provided by Reuters

LONDON (AP) — The maiden flight of a new non-stop regular passenger service between Australia and Britain has touched down at London's Heathrow Airport.

The Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner, operated by Qantas Airways, arrived Sunday in London just over 17 hours after setting off from the western Australian city of Perth. Flight-tracking service FlightAware showed the flight time as 17 hours, 14 minutes.

The new link with Perth — a 9,009-mile (4,498-kilometer) journey — is around three hours quicker than routes that involve stopovers in the Middle East to change planes or refuel. It is also set to shorten journeys from London to Sydney or Melbourne, compared with flying via Dubai.

The route is the first regularly scheduled airline route to connect Australia to Europe.

The route is about a quarter more than Britain's previous longest service — 7,275 miles (11,707 kilometers)— which was flying between London and Jakarta, the capital of Indonesia.