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Air Canada’s first daily flight to Brisbane from Vancouver touched down on Friday morning, marking the first nonstop scheduled service between Canada and Brisbane.
The inaugural flight AC35 was operated by Boeing 787-8 C-GHPV, and touched down at 7:07am. The 251-seat 787 made the trans-Pacific journey in 14 hours 14 minutes, having departed Vancouver at 11:45 Wednesday evening (crossing the international date line in the meantime).
Brisbane becomes Air Canada’s second Australian port as the airline also flies daily to Sydney using either Boeing 777-200LRs or, during peak seasons, the larger 777-300ER.
“Our new Brisbane flights complement our daily flights between Canada and Sydney, solidifying our market-leading position as the airline providing the most seats between Canada and Australia,” Benjamin Smith, president, passenger airlines at Air Canada, said in a statement.
“The seamless connections through in-transit pre-clearance facilities combined with our extensive domestic Canada and USA network radiating from Vancouver position YVR to be the preferred trans-Pacific gateway for business and leisure travellers alike.”
Air Canada schedules flight AC35 to depart Vancouver at 2345, arriving in Brisbane at 0715 two days later. The reciprocal AC36 is timed to depart Brisbane at 1040 and land in Vancouver at 0715 the same day.
“No airport in Canada has ever had service to Brisbane; but this service has come about because of our strength as both a destination and a connecting hub, and because of our industry-beating airline rates and charges program,” said Vancouver Airport Authority president and CEO Craig Richmond.
“In this process we’ve built strong relationships with Canadian and Australian tourism partners and with Brisbane Airport, who we’ll continue to work with to make this new route successful.”
The Brisbane services will initially be operated by 787-8s, fitted with 20 business class suites, 21 premium economy and 210 economy class seats. From October the route is due to be operated by the larger, 298-seat 787-9.
Air Canada says the Vancouver-Brisbane services are part of an ongoing international expansion, following the recent launch of Toronto-London Gatwick and Toronto-Prague services. New Toronto-Budapest, Toronto-Warsaw, Toronto-Glasgow, Toronto-Seoul, Montreal-Casablanca, Montreal-Lyon, Vancouver-Dublin and Vancouver-Delhi services are also planned this year.
Robert Foster
says:Great leaveing on this plane Sunday at 10.40 am. 5/6/2016 with my wife to fly to Vanacover lucky me.
Peter
says:Air Canada is also advertising this as the fastest way from Brisbane to New York. Interesting when they first talked about this route, YVR to BNE, it was only going to be 3 times a week with a 787 800 and then decided to go daily because of demand. They are putting the larger 787 900 on in Oct.. Hope it works
Neil
says:Great to see a direct YVR-BNE service with new aircraft but fares are quite expensive and hard to justify paying the extra when flights BNE-LAX-YVR & return are substantially cheaper and flight times are comparably not that much longer.
ian
says:Canada 3000(the 1st truly low cost long haul) did fly BNE/YVR direct(via HNL) in late 90’s.
Canada 3000’s biggest day of sales was 10SEP 2001, day before World Trade Centers.
That killed them.
franz chong
says:I could be wrong here but I think it was in the eighties Qantas had services that started in Cairns and went via Brisbane and Honolulu to Vancouver or the other way around.That’s how I did it on my sole Canada trip to date for a School Cultural Exchange in 1989/1990 for a month.We lot started in SYDNEY on the QF3 and changed at HNL FOR YVR on the 747 and it was the same coming home onto the QF4.QF25/QF26 were the FLIGHT NUMBERS from memory.
Steve
says:Let’s hope they up their customer service offering not like the tired old service from SYD, surly cabin crew, and food service almost third world, check those tired chicken sandwiches wrapped in glad wrap like your mum sent to school.