News
Border reopening optimism prompts a flurry of Australian schedule updates
September 27th 2021
The Qantas Group on Monday reacted to signs of borders reopening in Australia with plans to reroute its flagship Perth-London service via Darwin while bringing forward the reopening date between Victoria and New South Wales. Read More » The Australian carrier brought forward scheduled services between Australia’s two most populous states from December 1 to November 5 and said it would significantly increase regional flying in New South Wales to about 40% of pre-COVID levels from October 25. However, it will delay the restart of domestic flying between locked-down Western Australia and Victoria-New South Wales by two months until February 1, 2022 and reroute its flagship Melbourne-Perth-London service until April 2022. The announcement came after Victoria announced a reopening roadmap and Australia’s most populous state, New South Wales, on Monday said it would begin lifting COVID restrictions from October 11 and expected life to largely return to normal by December 1. “It’s great to see plans firming up for some domestic borders opening given the success of the national vaccine rollout,’’ Qantas Group CEO, Alan Joyce, said. “We are planning to ramp up flying between Melbourne and Sydney, which is usually the second busiest air route in the world, almost a month earlier than expected. There are a lot of regional destinations that will open up for the first time since June, which is great news for tourism as well as family and friends who can’t wait to see each other again.” The Melbourne-Darwin-London service was subject to discussions with the Northern Territory government and a Melbourne-Singapore-London flight was an alternative if talks were unsuccessful, the airline said. Meanwhile, Virgin Australia is expanding its promise to reintroduce short-haul international flying, with pre-Christmas services scheduled to Fiji in response to climbing Australian vaccination rates. The flights, which are subject to international borders reopening, will see the airline flying Sydney-Nadi and Brisbane-Nadi from December 23 and Melbourne-Nadi from December 24. The Qantas Group and Fiji Airways also have scheduled flights between Australia and the popular Pacific holiday destination prior to Christmas.
