United Airlines’ debut flight from San Francisco to Brisbane landed on Saturday, making it the first American airline to offer regular, non-stop service between the US mainland and Queensland.

Flight UA96 will depart SFO at 11:20 pm on Tuesdays, Fridays, and Sundays, arriving in BNE at 6:30 am local time on each of those days. Return flight UA97 will leave BNE at 10:30 am and land in SFO at 6:40 am on the same day.

A Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner will be utilised for this flight by the airline.

The first trans-Pacific flight occurred between these two cities nearly a century before the new service began.

“In 1928, Sir Charles Kingsford Smith and his crew became the first to fly across the Pacific from San Francisco to Brisbane. Ninety-four years later, the route they pioneered will now deliver thousands of tourists to Queensland,” Brisbane Airport Corporation CEO Gert-Jan de Graaff said.

“That first pioneering journey took 83 hours and 38 minutes, and now it’s a 13-hour 45-minute flight. And the historic Southern Cross aircraft sits opposite our International Terminal where United Airlines docked this morning.”

United Airlines’ Patrick Quayle, SVP of global network planning and alliances, conveyed his company’s delight in partnering with the Queensland Government and Brisbane Airport to launch the flights and become “the first US airline to add a new transpacific destination to its global network since the start of the pandemic.”

“United has a long history in Australia, and with our new partnership with Virgin Australia, now is the ideal time to expand our service and offer additional convenient flight options to our customers on both sides of the Pacific,” Quayle said.

According to Queensland Tourism Minister Stirling Hinchliffe, the service is the first to get funding from Queensland’s $200 million Attracting Aviation Investment Fund, hoping to revitalise the state’s $6 billion international visitor industry.

“United Airlines from San Francisco alone is predicted to contribute $27 million to the State’s visitor economy and an extra 40,000 inbound seats, supporting 260 good Queensland jobs,” he added.

Australians flying to the US will now be able to connect to more than 80 destinations across North America via United’s SFO hub, thanks to the new route.

US Consulate General Christine Elder, who was present when the first flight landed, expressed her desire to see a large number of Americans travel to Australia and many Australians to the United States to experience all that it has to offer.

The new United Airlines route between the United States and Australia will open up countless opportunities for connections, which will make it easier for thousands of people to travel between our countries.

United Airlines has announced that starting on 14 December; it would boost its frequency of flights between Sydney and San Francisco to ten per week.