Qantas moves A380 London stopover from Dubai to Singapore, the city with the world's best airport hub

It's said that you often never truly value something until it's gone. It's a maxim that could apply to Singapore, the island city-state that Australian travellers once loved to dismiss as a cultural desert (oh, the irony). But then Qantas, after partnering with Emirates, dumped it as a stopover in favour of a real desert destination.

In the meantime, as Qantas flirted with Dubai as its main hub for passengers en route to Europe, Singapore reinvented itself, with an array of new cultural and entertainment attractions, as a more dynamic destination, worthy of even a proper holiday than a mere stopover, and as a genuine global food capital.

Now our de facto national carrier has announced that it will reroute its daily, and prestigious, Sydney to London A380 service to fly via Singapore instead of Dubai, from March next year.

Singapore's main daily newspaper, The Straits Times, described the decision as "a significant boost to Singapore's [Changi Airport] air hub status". Australia, as The Straits Times points out, remains among Changi Airport's top five markets in passenger traffic terms, with more than 5.5 million passengers travelling between Singapore and Australia annually.

The decision by Qantas will mean a considerably shorter first leg from Sydney compared to the extended one to Dubai (but, conversely, a longer hop to Europe from Singapore), and an opportunity for Australians to fully re-engage with clean, safe, efficient and friendly Singapore as a stopover, and more, destination.

Despite widespread admiration for Emirates as an first-rate airline, Australians, it seems, have never completely fallen for Dubai, as either a stopover or a holiday destination, with its tourism authorities failing to successfully position it in this market of prolific travellers.