Qantas Swings Boeing 787 onto Sydney-Vancouver

Qantas will switch its seasonal Sydney-Vancouver route from a Boeing 747 to a Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner service from next summer.

Qantas traditionally operates a 3x weekly service from Sydney to Vancouver over December and January. But next summer, the route will operate for an extra month, running from 12 December 2020 until 27 February 2021. The route takes advantage of demand from Australians travelling to Canada for the ski season, as well as Canadians escaping the northern winter for the sun and beaches of Australia.

The thrice-weekly Qantas Boeing 787-9 service from Sydney to Vancouver will operate next season on Mondays, Thursdays & Saturdays with the following schedule:

• QF75 Sydney (SYD) 20:15 – Vancouver (YVR) 15:05
• QF76 Vancouver (YVR) 20:00 – Sydney (SYD) 06:10 (+2 days)

Flights are now on sale, but at the time of writing, we couldn’t find any Qantas award availability on this route.

The Qantas Dreamliner features Economy, Premium Economy and Business seating. Although nobody outside of Qantas would call the Boeing 787 Business class product “mini First class”, it is a substantial improvement over Qantas’ Boeing 747 Business class seats. For Economy passengers, however, the updated in-flight entertainment system and extra legroom offered by the Boeing 787 may not be enough to compensate for the extremely narrow seats.

Air Canada flies year-round from Sydney and Brisbane to Vancouver, and seasonally from Melbourne to Vancouver, using Boeing 787s.

The remaining five Boeing 747s in the Qantas fleet are all due to be retired by early 2021. With the Sydney-Vancouver route switching to a Boeing 787, that leaves just two Boeing 747 routes for which Qantas has not announced a replacement aircraft: Sydney-Tokyo and Sydney-Johannesburg.

Given the restrictions that apply to A380 operations at Tokyo’s Haneda Airport, and the ETOPS limitations that would apply to twin-engine aircraft flying from Australia to South Africa, it’s quite likely that Sydney-Haneda will eventually become a Boeing 787-9 service and Sydney-Johannesburg will switch to an A380 route. However, Qantas has not yet announced its plans to the public.

Qantas’ Sydney-Santiago route, currently served four times per week by a Boeing 747, will switch to a daily Boeing 787-9 service in June.

Matt Graham

The editor of Australian Frequent Flyer, Matt's passion for travel has taken him to over 70 countries… with the help of frequent flyer points, of course!
Matt's favourite destinations (so far) are Germany, Brazil & Kazakhstan. His interests include economics, aviation & foreign languages, and he has a soft spot for good food and red wine.

You can connect with Matt by posting on the Australian Frequent Flyer community forum and tagging @AFF Editor.