Coronavirus: Qantas plans non-stop scenic flight to soar over borders

Qantas has promised to look at more ‘scenic’ flights after a non-stop seven-hour flight from Sydney to Sydney sold out in ten minutes.

Uluru will be one of the destinations on Qantas’ one-off mystery flight.

Qantas will look at scheduling more scenic flights over Australia after a seven-hour service from Sydney-to-Sydney sold out within ten minutes.

The non-stop flight over Uluru, the Great Barrier Reef and Sydney Harbour, was devised by Qantas to get around state border closures and the ban on international travel.

A total of 149 seats were made available on the Boeing 787-9, priced from $787 for economy to $3787 for business class, with all of them gone ten-minutes after going on sale.

A Qantas spokeswoman said the speed of the bookings was a surprise.

“It’s probably the fastest selling flight in Qantas history,” she said.

“People clearly miss travel and the experience of flying. If the demand is there, we’ll definitely look at doing more of these scenic flights while we all wait for borders to open.”

A flight out of Brisbane was likely to be scheduled soon but Melbourne would have to wait until COVID restrictions eased.

Sydney architect David Thompson was among those quick enough to buy a ticket, and said he saw it as an opportunity to “get in the air again in a year that hasn’t seen any flying”.

“It’s a great way of bringing something different to a year that has been very repetitive, mostly just full of zoom calls,” Mr Thompson said.

Qantas Group CEO Alan Joyce said the Great Southern Land flight was designed to fulfil the travel experience many had been missing through the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Just six months ago, we would have never imagined not being able to jump on a plane and visit family interstate or take a holiday internationally,” Mr Joyce said.

Q A N T A S

“While we may not be able to take you overseas right now, we can certainly provide inspiration for future trips to some of Australia’s most beautiful destinations.”

Qantas planned to combine the flight with an auction of memorabilia saved from its Boeing 747s, which were retired to the desert in July due to the COVID crisis.

Among the items up for sale were a galley control unit, exit sign and the in-flight phone handsets used by crew.

The “borderless” flight sold out as Qantas expanded its campaign to “safely reopen borders” to its frequent flyer members.

Emails were sent to the program’s database of 13 million members, inviting them to sign a petition and describe how border closures had affected them personally.

On Radio National on Thursday, Mr Joyce said already 17,000 of the airline’s employees had signed the petition, and included “heartbreaking stories”.

“What we want to show is that there are a lot of people asking for this to be sorted and when you do get a campaign like this working, it does focus attention, Mr Joyce said.

“We’ve been talking about this (border closures) for weeks and months, and we haven’t got a clear solution. If anything the disparity is increasing.”

He said if state borders opened, Australia could be on the cusp of a domestic tourism boom that would help keep the 1 million people employed by the tourism industry in jobs.

Qantas has already flagged as many as 8500 job losses from its 29,000-strong workforce due to the impact of the COVID crisis.

Last month, the group posted a $2.7bn before tax loss for the 2020 financial year, and warned of another significant loss in 2021.

International flying was not expected to resume until the 2022 financial year but Mr Joyce remained hopeful domestic flying could recover more quickly when borders reopened.

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Qantas’ scenic flight will use its Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner painted with Indigenous livery. Picture: Supplied