First announced in December, Qantas has now begun selling tickets for the new Melbourne-San Francisco. The route launches on September 1, 2018 and will be operated by one of its new Boeing 787 Dreamliners.
As is often the case with new routes, it has opened opportunities for Award tickets. A reasonable number of Award Sears have been made available to Qantas Frequent Flyers. You may need to act quickly to take advantage of this opportunity.
Melbourne – San Francisco
While Qantas already operates a Sydney – San Francisco service, the non stop Melbourne service is new to the network. From a timetable perspective, it will operate 4 days a week. The Dreamliner will also continue to operate to Los Angeles, but will drop back to a twice weekly service.
The overall timetable for Melbourne to San Francisco and Los Angeles is shown below. This timetable comes into effect from 1 September
Qantas’ Melbourne – San Francisco and Melbourne – Los Angeles schedule
| Route | Flight | Dep Time | Arr Time | Frequency | Aircraft |
| MEL-SFO | QF 49 | 2140** | 1900 | Wed, Thu, Sat, Sun | B789 |
| MEL-LAX | QF 95 | 2140** | 1900 | Mon, Fri | B789 |
| MEL-LAX | QF 93 | 0905** | 0635 | Daily | A380 |
| SFO-MEL | QF 50 | 2200 | 0630+2** | Wed, Thu, Sat, Sun | B789 |
| LAX-MEL | QF 96 | 2355 | 0825+2** | Tues, Fri | B789 |
| LAX-MEL | QF 94 | 2255 | 0750+2** | Daily | A380 |
Award seats
It can be hard to snag award seats on Trans Pacific routes on Qantas. However, as is often the case with routes that have ust gone on sale, there are quite a few award seats on offer.
In order to grab one of these seats, you’ll need 96,000 Qantas Points for business, 72,000 Qantas Points for premium economy or 45,000 Qantas Points for economy. These are the one way point costs, and you will need to add on the various cash fees and charges that apply to a Qantas award seat.
These award seats may well get snapped up pretty quickly, but as I write this, there is a reasonable number of seats available across all cabins.
