The Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner.
Benjamin Zhang/Business Insider
Qantas will launch its first non-stop route that will connect Australia and Europe.The Aussie airline will use a fleet of
Boeing 787-9 Dreamliners to inaugurate its nonstop service from Perth, Western Australia, to London.Qantas took delivery of its first Dreamliner last October.Business Insider went along for a portion of the plane's delivery flight from the Boeing factory in Everett, Washington, to Honolulu, Hawaii.
This weekend, Qantas will inaugurate a new route that will finally deliver non-stop scheduled flights between Australia and Europe.
The iconic Aussie airline will use its fleet of brand-new Boeing 787-9 Dreamliners for its new service between Perth, Western Australia, and London.
In October, Qantas took delivery of its first Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner. Currently, the airline boasts a fleet of four Dreamliners.
And by the end of 2018, that number will grow to eight aircraft.
The Dreamliner is the first new aircraft type introduced to the Qantas fleet in a decade and is destined to connect Australia and the UK with nonstop flying.
For Qantas, the significance of the new plane cannot be overstated.
"One of the big advantages of the Dreamliner is that it gives us a range of destinations we couldn't have done before," CEO Alan Joyce told Business Insider in an interview last October. "It gives you better economics because it's 20% more fuel efficient and with a lot lower maintenance cost given the new technology. That means there are routes we could have done before with distance, but couldn't do economically that now come onto the radar screen.
"For Qantas, it also starts overcoming the tyranny of distance we have," Joyce added.
Qantas also held a contest that allowed members of the public to submit names for the new plane. In the end, the name Great Southern Land was selected. It was chosen in honor of the '80s rock anthem of the same name by the band Icehouse, which is about the vastness and the beauty of the Australian landscape.
Boeing turned the plane over to Qantas at its Everett Delivery Center outside of Seattle, Washington.
As part of the festivities, Qantas allowed a group of journalists to experience the jet's delivery flight to company headquarters in Sydney alongside executives and dignitaries. Normally, delivery flights are fairly humdrum with only pilots and airline staff involved. However, this was a special occasion for Qantas, so the airline decided to make it a big event.
Business Insider was there. Here's how it went.