International travel cranks up on back of border relaxation

The international travel industry is cranking up again with Qantas to relaunch six routes in coming weeks and foreign airlines preparing to return.

British Airways will make its return to Sydney from London via Singapore on March 29. Picture: Bloomberg

Qantas will relaunch six international routes in coming weeks as demand surges on the back of the border announcement, and as foreign airlines restart services to Australia.

Just two days after Scott Morrison flagged the return of international tourists and business travellers from February 21, Qantas was seeing a spike in bookings.

Qantas Domestic and International CEO Andrew David said bookings for flights coming into Australia doubled within 24-hours of the announcement.

“Bookings are strongest out of the US and UK and we’ve also seen spikes from South Africa, India and Canada, with March, April and May the most popular months for travel,” Mr David said.

“This shows how much people want to come to Australia.”

With demand building, Qantas was preparing to restart a number of international routes including Sydney to Dallas from February 16 on Boeing 787-9s.

On March 27, another three routes would resume including Brisbane-Singapore, Sydney-Manila and Sydney-Jakarta, followed by Sydney-Denpasar on March 28 and Brisbane-LA on April 1.

On Monday, Qantas Group CEO Alan Joyce said the airline would look at restarting some routes sooner, or increasing capacity as travel cranked up again.

The border announcement has also prompted the return of other airlines who pulled out of Australian routes during the pandemic.

In October, just 38 international carriers were flying regularly in and out of Australia, compared to 64 two years ago. British Airways will make its return to Sydney from London via Singapore on March 29 in its first flight down under since April 2020.

The airline’s Asia Pacific head of sales, Noella Ferns said they could not wait to welcome customers back on board flights.

“We know some customers won’t have flown for a long time and we can assure them we have a range of Covid-19 measures in place to provide stress and hassle-free travel,” said Ms Ferns.

A flexibly policy applies to all international fares, with date changes permissible without fee.

AirAsia was also preparing to restart regular passenger flights for the first time since March 2020, kicking off with Kuala Lumpur to Sydney on February 14.

As more airlines resumed services, airfares were expected to come down after an early jump in price following the resumption of international travel late last year.

Aviation analytics company Cirium compared fares for flights to and from Australia in November 2021 and November 2019, and found the average one-way economy fare was 56 per cent higher at $829, while business class fares were up 64 per cent at $3491.

On London and LA routes, business class fares averaged $5117 and $3894 respectively, and economy class $1407 and $922 one way.

On the domestic front, it was a different story, with economy fares up an average of 11 per cent at $187 one way, and business class fares down 48 per cent at $397.

Interest in outbound travel continued to grow as more destinations reopened.

Webjet data for the two weeks to February 7 showed triple-digit leaps in searches for Bali, Manila and New Zealand.

Bali’s borders were relaxed for foreign tourists on February 5 although the requirement for five-days hotel quarantine was still seen as a deterrent to travel.

The Philippines planned to be back in business for foreign visitors from February 10, and New Zealand was looking at a July reopening to Australian tourists.