American Airlines will begin daily direct flights between Los Angeles and Sydney from 17 December this year.

The new flights will operate on American's flagship Boeing 777-300ER, which Qantas says will replace four of its Boeing 747 Sydney-LAX flights per week and one Boeing 747 Melbourne–LAX service per week.

Those 'spare' jumbo jets will allow Qantas to restart direct Sydney-San Francisco flights six days a week from December on its Boeing 747.

Tourism Australia Managing Director John O’Sullivan welcomed the capacity increases and the decision by American Airlines to add Australia to its international network, which he said represented great news for the tourism industry and US/Australia tourism more broadly.

“The United States is one of our largest volume and highest spending markets, with more than half a million American visitors pumping more than $2.6 billion tourism dollars into our economy each year."

“As part of our Tourism 2020 ambitions, we hope to grow the US market to more in excess of $5 billion by the end of the decade, and if we’re to achieve those sort of numbers we still need a significant and sustainable growth in aviation capacity. America Airlines obviously has a huge footprint within the United States and also significant marketing resources which, when combined together, will significantly improve access and awareness of Australia amongst many millions of American holiday makers and business travellers,” he said.

Sullivan said Tourism Australia would be working with American Airlines, Destination NSW and Sydney Airport Corporation to support the forthcoming launch.