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Qantas upgrades Perth planes

National carrier Qantas Airways will use wide-body Airbus A330s on all its weekday services between Sydney and Perth and Melbourne and Perth from May next year as it seeks more of the business travel market.

Qantas said the move would help it better serve the growing market in business travellers, who it says prefer the more comfortable wide-body aircraft.

Qantas on Sunday took delivery of another A330 from the Airbus factory in Toulouse, France, which will become the ninth A330 to fly on the Qantas domestic network.

Qantas has 30 wide-body aircraft operating on domestic routes in Australia, made up of A330s and B767s.

Qantas currently operates around 100 return flights with more than 26,000 seats from Perth to Sydney and Melbourne each week.

Qantas and rival Virgin Australia are both chasing a bigger chunk of the business market.

Virgin Australia recently said it had reached a 20 per cent share of the corporate travel market.

Virgin Australia has introduced business class across most of its domestic network, started flying its own wide-body A330s to Perth and forged alliances with a number of international carriers such as Singapore Airlines and Air New Zealand to expand its international reach.