Kangaroo Route

A Qantas Boeing 707 behind a De Havilland Comet of British Overseas Airways Corporation at Heathrow in 1963

Qantas first flew the Kangaroo Route on 1 December 1947. A Lockheed Constellation carried 29 passengers and 11 crew from Sydney to London with stops in Darwin, Singapore, Calcutta, Karachi, Cairo, and Tripoli (passengers stayed overnight in Singapore and Cairo). A return fare was £585 (equivalent to $40,100 in 2018), equivalent to 130 weeks average pay.[10] In the 1950s some Qantas flights made other stops, including Frankfurt, Zürich, Rome, Belgrade, Athens, Beirut, Tehran, Bombay, and Colombo.[11] In May 1958 the Kangaroo Route had 11 westward flights a week: four Qantas Super Constellations, four BOAC Britannias, and one Air India Super Constellation from Sydney to London, one KLM Super Constellation Sydney to Amsterdam, and one TAI Douglas DC-6B Auckland to Paris. In February 1959 Qantas' fastest Super Constellation took 63 hr 45 min Sydney to Heathrow and BOAC's Britannia took 49 hr 25 min. Jet flights (Qantas with Boeing 707) started in 1959; in April 1960 the fastest trip from Sydney to London was 34 hr 30 min with eight stops.

In the late 1950s, Qantas had a round-the-world network, flying Australia to Europe westward on the Kangaroo Route and eastward on the Southern Cross Route (via the Pacific Ocean).[1] In 1964 Qantas started a third route to London via Tahiti, Mexico, and the Caribbean, called the Fiesta Route.[12] Qantas dropped its Southern Cross Route and Fiesta Route in 1975. By 1969, Qantas had 11 Kangaroo Route flights a week from Sydney to London, taking 29–32 hours with 5–6 stops each; BOAC's 7-9 weekly flights previously had 7 stops.

A Qantas Boeing 747-400 over London

A Qantas Airbus A380 at Heathrow

In 1971 Qantas added Boeing 747s, reducing the travel time and number of stops (in the late 1970s flights typically stopped at Singapore and Bahrain). Fares fell, opening air travel to more people with more competition. In April 1974 Qantas commenced operating a one stop service from Perth to London with only one stop in Bombay with Boeing 707s.[13]

In 1989 Qantas set a world distance record for commercial jets when a Boeing 747-400, the City of Canberra (VH-OJA), flew non-stop from London to Sydney in just over 20 hours (with special fuel[14] and without passengers or cargo). This was the only nonstop flight ever made between both cities for the next 3 decades.[15]

Between 2003 and 2004, around 20 airlines operated services between the United Kingdom and Australia including Air China, Air India, All Nippon Airways, Asiana Airlines, British Airways, Cathay Pacific, China Airlines, China Eastern Airlines, China Southern Airlines, Emirates, Etihad Airways, EVA Air, Garuda Indonesia, Japan Airlines, Korean Air, Malaysia Airlines, Qantas, Qatar Airways, Philippine Airlines, Singapore Airlines, Thai Airways and Vietnam Airlines.

In June 2007 Gulf Air ceased operation between Sydney and Bahrain via Singapore.

Until early 2012 Air Mauritius flew Airbus A340s to Sydney and Melbourne from Mauritius, although it still operates a service from Perth with a twice-weekly Airbus A330.

As part of a new arrangement with Emirates, from 2013 all Qantas through services to the United Kingdom stopped in Dubai rather than their traditional Singapore stop, and said their "Asian services were no longer be a subsidiary of the 'Kangaroo Route'".[16] A hub in the middle of a route is more effective than a hub at either end as connecting traffic more easily fills the plane.[17] Qantas also announced that its service to Frankfurt via Singapore would end in April 2013, leaving London as its only European destination.[18]

After years of low demand and less popularity on Dubai services, Qantas announced in August 2017 that the Sydney-Dubai-London A380 Service will revert to a Sydney-Singapore-London service due to strong demand in the Asian market. Qantas flights on the traditional Kangaroo Route from Sydney to London reverted to a stopover in Singapore instead of Dubai on 25 March 2018. Five years after the change to fly through Dubai, Qantas uses the Airbus A380 on its new flagship route QF1/2, between Sydney and London via Singapore.[19]

Qantas selected the A350-1000 for non-stop flights

Non-stop flights from Perth to London commenced in March 2018 with Boeing 787s,[20] with the Kangaroo route becoming a non-stop route for the first time, while also connecting Australia and Europe via a non-stop route for the first time. (However, travel time from Sydney, Brisbane or Melbourne is slightly longer than via Singapore, Doha, Abu Dhabi or Dubai; for example, Sydney to London via Perth takes 26 hours, Sydney to London via Doha takes 22 hours). These flights operate out of Perth's Terminal 3 rather than the traditional T1 in order to facilitate seamless transfers from Qantas domestic flights. The non-stop service forms part of Qantas' secondary Kangaroo route QF9/10, between Melbourne and London via Perth. The route also opens up the possibility of further direct flights to Europe from Perth such as Paris and Frankfurt. In June 2022, Qantas launched a non-stop seasonal service from Perth to Rome.[21]

In late March 2020, prior to Qantas cutting all international services due to the COVID-19 pandemic, several repatriation flights were operated by Airbus A380, routed as Sydney-Darwin-London. The Singaporean government had banned transit passengers and airspace in the Middle East was closed, due to the pandemic.[22] This was the first time an Airbus A380 flew nonstop between Europe and Oceania.

In November 2021, Qantas resumed non-stop Kangaroo Route flights, this time from Darwin to London[23] before resuming the non-stop route between Perth and London in May 2022 following the reopening of Western Australia for international travel.[24]