More than 150,000 passengers have flown on Qantas’ non-stop Heathrow-Perth service in its first year.
UK residents made up the majority of overseas passengers on the Boeing 787 Dreamliner flights at 31%.
Just under 60% of passengers on the London-Perth leg were from Australia.
The airline has seen a 30% rise in the total number of passengers travelling between London and Australia via Perth – including a 7% increase in visitors from the UK travelling to Perth.
Strong demand has seen the flights at 94% full, with average flight times between London and Perth averaging at 16 hours and 5 minutes, with the fastest flight being 15 hours and 15 minutes.
Qantas is evaluating non-stop London-Sydney flights.
Group CEO Alan Mr Joyce said there had been several pleasant surprises over the 12 months, which would be used to inform the planning for other ultra-long haul flights.
“We didn’t plan to regularly break speed records in both directions. The current title holder arrived into Perth from London a full hour ahead schedule thanks to prevailing winds and our new flight planning system,” he said.
“Despite all the complicated logistics and technical challenges, there have been only been four cancelled flights out of 720 planned services for a reliability rating of 99.5%.”
Joyce added: “A year of operating this route shows that a hub in Western Australia connecting Australia to the world works really well.
“We have people coming from the east coast to join the flight and it’s made it a lot easier for people in Europe to visit Australia.
“Almost every flight is full and it turned a profit almost immediately, which is rare for new services because they have start up costs and it normally takes time to build demand.
“The work we put into managing passenger jetlag and designing a comfortable cabin has paid off. It’s the longest flight on our entire network but it has the highest level of customer satisfaction.”