Jetstar hopes sale will ignite domestic travel

Jetstar offers free return trips on flights from next February to stimulate travel.

Jetstar has teamed up with Tourism Australia to launch a new airfare sale designed to stimulate travel from next February. Picture: Gaye Gerard/NCA Newswire

Jetstar is hopeful a massive airfare sale launched on Tuesday will better the booking record set in June, when the carrier sold 220 seats a minute.

The “return for free” sale, which offers fares as low as $65 one-way with the return flight at no cost, will begin at 3pm AEDT and run until midnight on Thursday.

Up to 400,000 return trips are included in the sale across 51 domestic routes, for travel from February 2021 – when all state and territory borders are expected to be open.

A previous sale in June saw 70,000 fares sold in five hours, or about 220 a minute which was 40 per cent above the normal rate of bookings.

Although the latest restrictions imposed in response to a new COVID cluster in South Australia could temper demand, Jetstar CEO Gareth Evans expected the latest sale to be “very popular”.

“We know there is a strong pent-up demand for domestic travel and we’re confident our low fares will help increase visitors and give a boost to local tourism operators across Australia,” Mr Evans said.

Tourism Australia had partnered with Jetstar for the sale, as part of its “Holiday Here This Year” campaign.

Among the fares on offer, were $65 Sydney-Avalon return, $92 Brisbane-Sydney return, $159 for Hobart-Gold Coast return and $96 for Sunshine Coast-Sydney return.

The sale came as anger grew within the aviation industry about the response of several states to a COVID outbreak in South Australia.

Canberra Airport CEO Stephen Byron said the sudden changes to borders imposed by Western Australia, Queensland, Tasmania and the Northern Territory were nothing short of destructive.

“The aviation industry is teetering on the edge. If we can’t reverse these border closures within a week, it could be a case of government bailouts being required,” Mr Byron said.

He said New South Wales and the ACT had shown that borders could remain open without COVID cases getting out of hand.

“It is possible to live with the virus, to manage it and that’s what we have to do,” said Mr Byron.

“It’s not realistic to be slamming borders shut every time there’s a few cases in some part of the country. That completely undermines any confidence in travel, which is not helping anyone.”

Qantas Group CEO Alan Joyce also repeated calls for borders to reopen by Christmas before the airline’s 100th birthday event on Monday night.

“This is really important psychologically to open up the borders by Christmas,” Mr Joyce said.

“The social impact and the economic impact is enormous if it’s not there. People want small businesses and tourism to start again.”

He remained hopeful Qantas and Jetstar would be operating at between 50 and 60 per cent of pre-COVID capacity by Christmas providing borders were open.

“We know that health and safety is the number one priority but the patchwork of different border restrictions doesn’t make sense. There needs to be one standard across the entire country.”