Qantas ‘Talking To Air France’ About Direct Australia-Paris Flights

Flying fling.

Qantas ‘Talking To Air France’ About Direct Australia-Paris Flights

Alan Joyce has revealed on 6PR Perth radio that Qantas is “talking to Air France” about direct Perth-Paris flights. But how long until we can actually fly direct to Paris to pick up a couple of baguettes?


The country of Carrefour and croissants is an aspiration. A far away one at that. But it might be getting closer, if Qantas, Air France and Perth Airport authorities can wheel a good deal.

Speaking to Oliver Peterson on Perth Live, Qantas CEO, Alan Joyce said: “Rome is definitely coming back and it’s going to be there for the European summer between June and October and we want to do more – we’d love to be able to do Paris and we’re talking to Air France and other European airlines about how we could do that.”

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Mr Joyce also told his host about Qantas’ woes closer to home, explaining: “Unfortunately, we had to suspend Jakarta and Johannesburg because of the customs issues that we’re having… in our terminals… which we’re trying to resolve with the customs authorities at the airport.”

Paris
Paris at night. Image via Getty.

He then spoke about the broader need for Qantas to get Perth airport to play ball if it wants to bring all its West coast expansion ideas to life, saying: “Unfortunately we’re probably paused in terms of expansion until we can reach an agreement with the airport in the development of those terminals. We’d love to move across to the other side… but we need a long-term deal with Perth airport in order to get that.”

“We’re hoping we can reach an agreement because it will unlock a huge amount of growth for Qantas.”

Alan Joyce

He also shed a little light on the aircraft situation. Mr Joyce said: “On top of Paris and potentially other destinations in Europe, we’re taking one new aircraft every month this year and that grows to one new aircraft every three weeks. Some of these aircraft are narrow bodies but they can fly from Perth to a huge range of destinations in Asia. We’d love to be able to expand our operations from Perth into Asia as well and make it a … big… second only to Sydney in size if we could get an agreement with the airport to do that.”

For those considering pinging to Paris if and when direct flights from Perth become a reality, you might want to read up on how to drink coffee like a true Parisian, or the real reason the city of love is better known for its surly serveurs (see: why Parisians hate tourists).