As New South Wales and Victoria reopen their borders amid the COVID-19 pandemic, Monday is very much Australia's day when it comes to the world of travel news; but the country's national carrier was pipped at the post in the race to be the first airline to touch down on Australian soil.
A Qantas flight from Los Angeles to Sydney was scheduled to touch down at 6am (local time) carrying a planeload of double-vaccinated passengers who don't need to quarantine, five minutes before a flight operated by Singapore Airlines.
However, Singapore Airlines flight SQ221 touched down nearly an hour early, landing at 5:15am (local time), with live coverage of it beating Qantas broadcast live on breakfast shows across Australia.
It's the first of two Singapore Airlines flights to arrive in Sydney today, as well as two flights into Melbourne, carrying approximately 300 passengers in total.
A spokesperson for Singapore Airlines told Newshub it expects to soon be flying around 2500 passengers per week into Australia across nearly 30 weekly flights into the country from Singapore.
Qantas will be operating a flight to London from Sydney via Darwin late on Monday evening.
