Perth left out of Qantas travel restart plans

Qantas will temporarily drop Perth from its international flight schedule and pause any increase in domestic flights in response to WA’s hard-line border policy.

Qantas 787s will fly out of Darwin instead of Perth when the airline resumes its non-stop London flights in December. Picture: James D. Morgan/Getty

Qantas will temporarily drop Perth from its international itinerary and pause any increase in domestic flights to the city after determining there is no hope of Western Australia reopening its borders until early next year.

The decision means the airline’s popular Perth-London services which start in Melbourne, will instead go via Darwin until at least next April.

Qantas will also delay the resumption of regular domestic routes to Perth from New South Wales and Victoria until February 2022.

The announcement came as Qantas prepares to ramp up domestic flights from November 5, based on Victoria’s reopening plan.

Qantas chief executive Alan Joyce said it was great to see plans firming up for some domestic borders opening, given the success of the national vaccine rollout.

“We’re now 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,” he said.

“There are also 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.”

He said based on discussions with the West Australian government, they knew borders would not reopen to NSW and Victoria until early next year so “sadly” Qantas has to cancel the flying planned for those routes in the lead up to Christmas.

A minimum service for people with permits to travel between those states would be maintained.

“At this stage, Western Australia doesn’t intend to open to international travel until sometime next year, so we’ll unfortunately have to temporarily move our Perth-London service until at least April 2022,” Mr Joyce said.

“Instead of operating from Melbourne to Perth and then on to London as it usually does, this flight will operate from Melbourne to London via either Darwin or Singapore, depending on conversations we’re having with the Northern Territory in the coming weeks.

“We look forward to operating this flight via Perth again when circumstances allow.”

Mr Joyce said Qantas would continue to make adjustments to its flying schedule based on discussions with state and territory governments.

But he confirmed the resumption of international services remained on track for December 18 onwards.

“People are clearly keen to travel. We saw a 175 per cent spike in web searches in the week after we announced our plans and we’ve seen strong bookings for December and January for our flights to London, Los Angeles and Singapore in particular,” said Mr Joyce.

“The key factor in determining the ongoing demand level for international flying will be what the quarantine arrangements are for Australians when they return.”

Although Qantas considered the seven-day home quarantine trial in New South Wales as “a great step forward” Mr Joyce said it was hoping the system evolved quickly for vaccinated travellers from low-risk countries to not have to quarantine on arrival at all.

“Australia itself is on track to have one of the highest vaccination rates in the world. That’s fast becoming the standard between many countries overseas,” he said.

Qantas would continue to offer “sale fares” on domestic routes to help stimulate demand for travel.

Last week, a 24-hour Jetstar $20 fare sale sold out in the first five-hours.

“This is good news for the tourism industry, which has taken such a huge hit throughout the crisis,” Mr Joyce said.