Qantas racing to meet demand for international travel

Alan Joyce has met with other major airline bosses and all are warning of delays and upheaval for European travellers over the northern summer.

Qantas CEO Alan Joyce says he cannot bring aircraft back into service fast enough to meet demand for international travel despite horror stories from travellers in the northern hemisphere.

The airline expects to have five of its 10 remaining A380s back in the air by the end of the year and is awaiting delivery of another three Boeing 787-9s.

With demand for travel currently outstripping supply, Qantas expects to be back to 85 per cent of its pre-Covid international capacity by December and 100 per cent by mid-2023.

The flying kangaroo will farewell its inaugural Perth-Rome flight on Wednesday and Mr Joyce told a business breakfast in Perth, negotiations were underway in Paris for a suitable slot at Charles de Gaulle Airport.

But he was mindful of the problems being experienced at a number of European airports, with the expectation the summer period would be “terrible”.

After talking with other airline CEOs at the International Air Transport Association summit in Doha, Mr Joyce said the short term outlook was not good.

Airlines are looking at ways to automate tasks in order to cope with labour shortages.

“British Airways was saying they had 18,000 bags stranded at Heathrow on Saturday,” Mr Joyce

“KLM and Lufthansa were telling us they think it’s going to get worse. KLM and Air France were flying empty aircraft out because they couldn’t let people go out of the country.”

In Canada, airports were using “metering” to try to stagger the number of people heading into terminals for processing.

The strategy meant aircraft were held on the tarmac or at the gate until passengers were allowed to disembark and in some instances the waits were longer than the preceding flight.

Labour shortages were also a major issue for many airlines, with Mr Joyce pointing out American Airlines had grounded 100 aircraft because there were not enough pilots to operate them.

IATA senior vice president of operations Nick Careen said there was a need to explore greater automation at airports needed to help overcome staff shortages.

Remote control technology already existed for the positioning of aerobridges and aircraft tows but was not widely used, he said.

Loading bags onto aircraft was another area where automation could be used in the place of workers, many of whom had not returned to the aviation industry after being laid off early in the pandemic.

“The labour market is very tight and we’re competing with many industries now, and many people are selecting jobs that are less onerous than throwing bags on the ramp, doing shift work and so on,” said Mr Careen.

“There’s also the challenges of security clearances (for airside workers). In the UK it’s taking six months for someone to be security cleared and badged which is clearly unsustainable.”

Mr Joyce also tackled the issue of business class airfares on transcontinental flights in Australia, with Qantas charging $2500 one-way whether the passenger was on a wide-body A330 or a narrow body 737.

He said the small number of seats available was driving up fares, but pointed out that the difference between Qantas and Virgin on the route, if booked 28-days in advance was about $400.

“The problem you have it’s not just the seat on the aircraft. It’s the product and everything that comes with it. We have 35 lounges, free Wi-Fi on-board, Virgin doesn’t have that,” he said.

“We have our frequent flyer scheme, frequent flyer points that are the envy of the world.”