Qantas will add seven new routes and two new destinations to its home network from early 2021.
The bulk of the routes, to be flown by the airline’s QantasLink arm, spear out from Melbourne, though Sydney and Adelaide also choose up one new service every.
- Sydney-Griffith: each day flights from February 1
- Melbourne-Newcastle: 12 flights per week from February 1
- Melbourne-Merimbula: 4 flights per week from February 1
- Melbourne-Mount Gambier: 5 flights per week from March 28
- Melbourne-Wagga Wagga: 4 flights per week from March 28
- Melbourne-Albury: 4 flights per week from March 28
- Adelaide-Mount Gambier: 5 flights per week from March 28
Most flights will feature the 50-seat Bombardier Dash 8 Q300 turboprop, with lead-in fares starting from $125 one-way.
Several existing Qantas regional services are additionally set for improvement.
Sydney-Orange will jump from three flights per week to every day from February, with Melbourne-Gold Coast flights going twice-daily from April with a new schedule to cater for each business and leisure travelers.
Seasonal routes similar to Perth-Hobart, Canberra-Hobart, and Brisbane-Port Macquarie will likely be promoted to function on a year-round foundation.
Home-grown travel increase
The airline says its regional ramp-up is meant to each faucet into and spike demand for domestic travel, particularly as international flying is anticipated to stay largely off the agenda until the second half of 2021 because of the coronavirus pandemic.
“We all know there may be vital pent-up demand for travel,” says QantasLink CEO John Gissing.
“These new flights will assist more Australians to discover a few of the incredible locations in their own yard and drive tourism, which is so very important to the local economies of regional areas.”
“Earlier than COVID, more than 11 million Australians traveled abroad annually, so these flights will assist convert a few of these international trips into home holidays as an alternative,” Gissing added.
Rex responds
However, rival Regional Specific has described Qantas’ move as “an opportunistic strategy of flooding the regional airline market with the extra capability to get rid of weaker regional rivals, which could have devastating long-run impacts for regional aviation.”
Qantas was trying “to weaken Rex by attacking its worthwhile regional operations even at the cost of heavy losses for itself,” the airline mentioned in an announcement issued overnight.
It is known for the Federal Government “to stop all grants to Qantas if it persists with this opportunistic behavior.”
Rex itself received a total of $62 million in government help to June 30, and as previously reported will start directly competing with Qantas on the Sydney-Melbourne-Brisbane market from March 2021, with opening fares pitched at $79 for the economic system and $299 for Business – class.
