The CEO of Qantas (QF, Sydney Kingsford Smith) has warned ongoing issues with operating international flights out of Terminal 3 at Perth International threatens the airline's ability to expand international flights in and out of the city.

While other international flights at Perth use Terminal 1, the primary international terminal, Qantas had customs and immigration facilities installed at Terminal 3, its dedicated Perth terminal located 10 kilometres drive away on the other side of the airport, to accommodate its Perth - London Heathrow flights which started in 2018.

CEO Alan Joyce has made no secret of his desire to integrate Qantas's domestic and international operations into single terminals at airports like Perth and Sydney Kingsford Smith. He has also made no secret of his strategy to use Perth as a western jumping-off point for additional long-haul non-stop flights to Europe. However, his efforts to move additional international services over to Terminal 3 have met with resistance from the airport and customs authorities. Last week, Joyce told Perth radio station 6PR that it was holding up the expansion of services from the Western Australia capital.

"We're probably paused in terms of expansion until we can reach an agreement with the airport on the development of those terminals," he said. "We're still in dialogue with Perth Airport, we're hoping to get an agreement because it will unlock a huge amount of growth for Qantas."

Qantas presently operates a daily B787-9 Perth - London flight as well as a daily A330-200 roundtrip flight to Singapore Changi. In addition, last year it launched a highly successful seasonal service between Perth and Rome Fiumicino which Joyce said will run again this year between June and October. But the launch of direct flights to Johannesburg O.R. Tambo was delayed last year owing to Terminal 3 access issues and an announced service to Jakarta Soekarno-Hatta was canned at the last minute.

Joyce said there is "just not the space and facilities for customs to do it. If we could fix that, we'd put them back in. London and Rome we can continue to do, and what we are doing to Singapore we can continue to do and there's no intention to withdraw there."

Perth Airport has a multi-billion dollar redevelopment plan underway that will eventually see all commercial airlines relocated to the one operating precinct, something Joyce supports but says is still years away. He's looking for a shorter-term solution, namely Perth Airport and the Australian Border Force (ABF) deploying more resources to Terminal 3 to allow Qantas to schedule more international flights from there.

"We want to do more, we'd love to be able to do Paris CDG and were talking to Air France (AF, Paris CDG) and other European airlines about how we can do that. We're taking one new aircraft every month this year and it soon grows to one new aircraft every three weeks. Some of these aircraft are narrowbodies, but they can fly from Perth to a huge range of destinations in Asia and we'd love to be able to expand our operations from Perth into Asia and make it (Perth) into a hub second only to Sydney if we could get an agreement from the airport to do that."

Perth is a major hub for Qantas domestic and intrastate flights and the base of most of its lucrative fly-in-fly-out contract charter work. But until Joyce developed his Perth western hub strategy around five years ago, Qantas international services through the airport had been in decline for decades. He told 6PR unless an agreement is reached, he wouldn't hesitate to deploy any available aircraft flagged for Perth into other markets. "Other airports around the country are keen to get it (additional flights). Aircraft are moveable assets," he said. "I really want to do Perth, we just need to get an agreement from the airport."