Early birds: Qantas Dreamliners on Perth-London route beating scheduled time

Qantas Dreamliners have consistently beaten scheduled flight times between Perth and London in their first eight months, with one flight shaving an hour off the expected journey.

The airline now has six Boeing 787-9s and before flights started had expected the journey to average around 17 hours.

However, the airline says four in every five of its flights between Perth and London beat their scheduled time.

In September one set a new speed record between the two countries, flying from London to Perth in 15 hours 34 minutes, an hour quicker than the scheduled time.

''We studied a decade of weather patterns to find the best flight paths, then combined it with an intelligent flight planning system to hone in on the route with the most favourable winds of the day,'' the airline said.

The airline says it has the highest customer satisfaction rating of any flight on its network.

Close to 800 Dreamliners have been built and besides those already in its fleet, Qantas has a further eight on order as it retires its Boeing 747s. Qantas retired another of its Jumbos last month with the remaining nine to be steadily phased out by the end of 2020.

The twin-engine Dreamliners with more efficient engines, lighter composite construction and aerodynamic advances have made substantial fuel savings.

The airline says 787s use 2.5 litres less fuel for every kilogram of payload (passengers and freight), compared with its Jumbos.

Since the first aircraft, named Great Southern Land, touched down in Sydney a year ago the 787 fleet has flown more than 14 million kilometres - equivalent to travelling around the globe 361 times.

The planes have spent more than 18,000 hours in the air during 2000 flights and carried almost half a million passengers.

Passengers have been served 564,000 meals on the planes and 210,000 Fantale lollies.
Qantas has challenged Boeing and Airbus to come up with an aircraft capable of flying even further with full passenger loads.

Project Sunrise aims to have flights from the east coast of Australia to New York and London by 2022.