Jetstar, Virgin flight sale: Airlines slash fares as low as $49
Airlines are slashing fares as low as $49 in a bid to rake in holiday goers, with Jetstar and Virgin both offering huge discounts to popular getaway destinations - but for a limited time only.
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Airlines are slashing domestic airfares in a bid to reel in customers, with Jetstar offering flights as cheap as $49 and Virgin selling $69 airfares - but only for a limited time.
Budget airline Jetstar launched its 8-hour Friday Fare Frenzy deal at 12pm AEDT on Friday, with flights from Sydney to Launceston as cheap as $49 one way.
Holiday goers can also nab a bargain travelling to Hobart, Adelaide, Cairns and Uluru for less than $99 provided they fly between late July and 23 September 2020.
The news comes less than 24 hours after Virgin launched a mega comeback sale, slashing its domestic airfares and recording record-breaking numbers with 37,000 visitors to the site in the first hour.
The surge in customers marks the largest number of visitors to the airline’s website in two years.
The airline kickstarted its weekly Happy Hour seat sale at 11am on Thursday - with flights as cheap as $69 on offer until 11pm.
The 12-hour ‘Because Everyone Loves a Comeback’ sale offered deals on more than 125,000 flights on selected travel dates between July 13 to August 31, 2020.
Some of the best deals on offer included a $69 Sydney to Ballina flight, a $250 business class Coffs Harbour to Sydney flight and a $299 business class Sydney to Gold Coast airfare.
Virgin Australia Chief Commercial Officer John MacLeod said the return was a win for travelers as the tourism industry starts to recover.
“With travel restrictions starting to ease, we thought we would celebrate by bringing back Happy Hour and offering some great value fares."
Happy Hour sales will be offered by the airline weekly.
QANTAS STARTS NEW REGIONAL FLIGHTS
The news comes after Qantas announced two new flights to regional NSW.
The national carrier will now fly direct between Sydney and Byron Bay while hosting its first ever flight to Orange from July 20 in a bid to reboot the local tourism industry post-COVID.
The additional routes come after the airline ramped up the number of Qantas and Jetstar interstate flights on offer to destinations like Melbourne and Brisbane.
QantasLink CEO John Gissing said the airline has seen a recent spike in bookings, suggesting Australians are keen for a holiday after months in lockdown.
“These additional flights are coming at the right time for families who’ve spent much of the recent months confined to their homes and are looking forward to getting out and exploring their own State.”
Qantas reopens domestic lounges
On Tuesday, Qantas reopened a number of its domestic and regional lounges around the country the easing of state-based restrictions.
The airline closed its domestic and international lounges on March 23 at the height of government COVID-19 restrictions that grounded the bulk of domestic and international flights.
Qantas will reopen its lounges in phases starting with 11 of its 35 Australian domestic lounges today.
The company is putting a number of health and wellbeing measures in place.
These include:
- Capping the number of guests to comply with state-specific restrictions on indoor gatherings;
- A hosted All-Day Snacking Station replacing ‘self serve’ buffets and drink stations;
- Disposable coffee cups;
- Sanitising stations.
All lounges have undergone a deep clean during their closure.
Qantas chief customer officer Stephanie Tully said the re-opening of the lounges is the result of weeks of planning to ensure state regulations were met.
“We’re really pleased to welcome our Frequent Flyers back to our lounges across the country and get more of our people back to work,” she said.
“We’ve already rolled out some service changes on board for everyone’s wellbeing and now we’re announcing some changes to the lounge experience as well.”
Meanwhile, Virgin Australia is now refunding Velocity Frequent Flyers for taxes and charges paid against points-based bookings on flights that were cancelled.
Administrators Deloitte announced on Friday that US-based private investment firm Bain Capital was selected as the successful bidder for the airline after competitor Cyrus Capital Partners pulled out at the eleventh hour.
Velocity members are now being contacted by email and advised that payments will be made within 21 days but it could take longer due to limited staffing and the backlog of refunds being processed.
Administrator Deloitte said the airline has received 340,000 requests for refunds, and that “all efforts are being made to process qualifying refunds and applicable taxes as quickly as possible”, Executive Traveller reports.
It’s bad news for Virgin shareholders, however, with Deloitte clarifying they will not receive any distribution of their shares once the sale to Bain Capital is completed.
“We declare that we have reasonable grounds to believe that there is no likelihood that shareholders of VAH will receive any distribution for their shares,” said Deloitte.
“Depending on individual tax circumstances, shareholders may rely on this declaration to claim capital losses in the income year in respect of their shareholdings in VAH. Shareholders should seek their independent legal and taxation advice in respect of the consequences of this declaration.”
QANTAS BOSS VOWS TO PREVENT FURTHER JOB LOSSES
Qantas boss Alan Joyce last week pledged to fight to prevent more job losses at the national carrier as he warns thousands more jobs could go if the government doesn’t extend JobKeeper.
Alan Joyce told 2GB’s Ben Fordham he was “devastated” the airline had to cut more than 6000 jobs in a bid to drastically cut costs over the next three years, describing it as “the worst day I’ve ever had in this job.”
When asked about the more than 15,000 employees who remained stood down, Joyce said he had “every intent” of keeping them in work – but the extension of JobKeeper beyond September was critical.
“That’s why a scheme like Jobkeeper is really important to those 15,000 people,” he said.
The airline revealed it had raised almost $4 billion in equity on the share market – more than double its $1.9 billion call out.
Joyce said the news was a boon for the company in what were very difficult times.
“It shows what a good company Qantas is. We’re oversubscribed for that last night to the tune of nearly $4 billion. We have the market available to us.”
The Qantas CEO also revealed he would continue to work without pay through July after agreeing not to take a salary or bonuses for the past three months – a move followed by the Qantas senior team and board.
Joyce did, however, foreshadow he would start to receive a partial salary not long after this.
QANTAS JOB CUTS: WHO’LL BE HIT NEXT
The loss of 6000 jobs at Qantas and the grounding of its international fleet until July 2021 will affect tens of thousands of workers in the wider tourism industry, experts predict.
“The message out of today is that the international market is not coming back any time soon,” said Simon Westaway, executive director of the Australian Tourism Industry Council.
The “big gateways” for international travellers – Sydney, Melbourne and the South East and North East corners of Queensland – would cop the brunt of the hit, he said.
“They are most aligned to the international dollar. There are tens of thousands of jobs interrelated to this decision today,” Mr Westaway said.
National CEO of the Tourism Accomodation Association Michael Johnson said that while public health was the main priority, hotels “will not be able to fully recover until international travels resumes”.
“Problems in the airline industry will slow the recovery of the accommodation sector right across the country, which is why Tourism Accommodation Australia has been lobbying the government to extend the JobKeeper payment,” Mr Johnson said.
“At the moment JobKeeper is the only thing keeping the industry afloat.”
The Tourism and Transport Forum was making similar claims even before the Qantas announcement, releasing research on Monday this week that they said showed job losses in the industry could be as high as 130,000 if JobKeeper was not extended.
There are particular fears for travel agents, with Flight Centre revealing this week that 1500 staff are now facing redundancy, after 3800 were provisionally stood down in March.
Job losses in the cruising sector alone could be as high as 13,000 if ships do not resume operations beyond mid-September, the industry has warned.
International travellers make up a significant proportion of passengers on cruises in Australia – one in three passengers on the ill-fated Ruby Princess came from overseas, for example – and the absence of those travellers could make for a severely depleted 2020 season.
A recent forecast for the Cruise Lines International Association by AEC Group found that the suspension of cruise operations was likely to cost Australia more than $1.4 billion in lost economic activity by mid-September, and threaten the jobs of more than 4800 people.
If that suspension continued into the summer high season, the economic loss would balloon to $3.8 billion, and place 13,000 jobs at risk, the AEC forecast stated.
CLIA Managing Director Joel Katz said it was not possible to speculate on a return date for cruising, but while international travel was restricted, it would happen only on a regional basis.
“In Australia, this may involve domestic cruises, short itineraries for Australian-only passengers, or operations within a trans-Tasman bubble,” he said.
Cruise tourism was worth $5.2 billion a year to the Australian economy and supported more than 18,000 jobs across 50 destinations, including many in regional areas, Mr Katz said.
Jill Abel, CEO of the Australian Cruise Association, said the Qantas announcement had had a “sobering impact” on the industry.
“The proposed reduction in flight access from international markets into the future when the borders re-open will undoubtedly have a flow-on effect to the cruise sector as we are all connected under a larger tourism industry umbrella,” Ms Abel said.
Mr Westaway said the Qantas decision sharpened the need for the federal government to create certainty around the future of the JobKeeper program, and for state governments to reopen their borders.
He singled out the Queensland state government for its stance on borders, saying its apparent goal of eliminating the COVID-19 virus completely was out of step with the suppression strategy endorsed by the National Cabinet. Measures such as social distancing and contact tracing were far more effective at stopping the virus than border closures, he said.
“The Queensland government needs to sort out what they want to do,” Mr Westaway said. “They’ve got to enable the community to get oxygen.”
Aviation expert Geoffrey Thomas, editor in chief of the website Airline Ratings, said the continued closure of state borders, and the lack of the much-talked-about “Tasman bubble” were proving to be big frustrations for the travel and tourism sectors.
Internationally, the “carnage through the industry was massive”, and global losses for 2020 so far amounted to US$84 billion, he said.
But he warned there could be even more job losses at Qantas, depending on how the economy recovered, as well as at Virgin, although he predicted that airline would eventually “fly out of administration”.
The prospects of an economic recovery looked brighter even one week ago, Mr Thomas said, but the “Victorian hiccup” had put a dampener on such hopes.
A number of international airlines were poised to steal business and even market share from Qantas while they were not flying, Mr Thomas said.
“Airlines like Qatar and Singapore, they’re flying people in and out, and there’s large amount of freight going in and out of those flights as well,” he said.
“Those airlines will be picking up business that Qantas will not be getting.”
Mr Thomas said that if Australia continued with measures such as the mandatory two-week hotel quarantine for new international arrivals, international travel for most Australians might not resume until late in 2021.
“Qantas has to plan long term on all of these things,” he said.
Originally published as Jetstar, Virgin flight sale: Airlines slash fares as low as $49
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