AFL grand final heads bumper weekend for airlines as more seats added into Melbourne
Friday is set to be one of the busiest days for travelling since Covid-19 restrictions, as the AFL grand final between Sydney and Brisbane and school holidays sees flights across the country sell out.
Saturday’s AFL Grand Final clash between the Sydney Swans and Brisbane Lions will headline one of the busiest periods for the aviation sector post-Covid-19, as interstate fans and holiday makers pack out the country’s airports and airlines.
Nearly 300,000 travellers are set to transit through the country’s three largest airports of Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane on Friday, with some records expected to be challenged.
Airlines have increased flights to meet demand for the grand final with Qantas and Jetstar adding a combined 17 extra flights from Brisbane and Sydney into Melbourne, with more than 5,500 additional seats between the cities this weekend.
The official airline partner of the AFL, Virgin Australia, added more than 2,600 seats into Melbourne across 15 flights from Sydney and Brisbane for the grand final.
Melbourne Airport expected to accommodate more than 1.7 million people over the next two weeks. Friday should be the busiest day of 2024 as the city also hosted the NRL preliminary final between Melbourne Storm and Sydney Roosters.
“We are expecting more than 118,000 passengers through the terminals on Friday 27 September – that’s busier than the MCG will be on Grand Final Day. It’s also up there with our busiest day this year, when Swifties descended on Melbourne,” a spokeswoman said.
Qantas expected to fly 100,000 people into Melbourne as it also swapped out some Boeing 737 operated flights for the larger Airbus A330 used mostly on international flights. A spokesman told The Australian that as of Thursday morning, there were more than 2,500 seats still available across the group for flights on Thursday, Friday and Saturday morning.
On flights back to Brisbane on Sunday, all direct Qantas and Jetstar flights from Melbourne, including the extra capacity, have sold out in economy with a handful of business seats remaining. There are still options for customers to travel via Canberra.
It comes as Qantas said there had been no disruption to customers so far as a result of 1100 of 2500 engineers covered by its Aircraft Maintenance Engineers work groups conduct rolling stop works over pay conditions.
“As of early Thursday afternoon, we haven’t had any impact to customers as a result of the industrial action,” Qantas said.
“We have contingencies in place for the industrial action planned on Friday and the weekend and, like today, don’t currently expect this industrial action to have an impact on customers.”
A Virgin Australia spokesman said it had seen incredible demand from footy finals wanting to get to and from the grand final on Saturday and had increased flights as much as possible.
“We have scheduled more than 46,000 passenger seats into Melbourne for 26 – 28 September. This is 7 per cent higher than the comparable three-day period in 2023,” the airline said.
“Fares booked very close to departure dates and times tend to be higher than the average fare, in line with demand and the reduced number of available seats.
Analysis by The Australian shows as of Thursday afternoon, one-way flights between Sydney and Melbourne started at $508 for Qantas, $535 for Virgin Australia and Jetstar’s cheapest flight was $566.
From Brisbane, Virgin Australia’s cheapest direct flight was $485, but there were cheaper one-stop flights available, while Jetstar was priced from $472 and from $660 with Qantas.
Brisbane Airport expected about 62,000 passengers to pass through the domestic terminal on Friday in the travel boom sparked by the AFL grand final and the school holidays. For the six-day period between Wednesday and Monday, an estimated 75,400 passengers will travel between Brisbane and Melbourne.
“Friday would have been busy even without the Lions making the Grand Final due to the school holiday overlap, but now it is in record-breaking territory,” Brisbane Airport spokesman Peter Doherty said.
The current post-pandemic record in the Domestic Terminal was 61,061 passengers in September 2023 during the Brisbane Broncos and Lions Grand Finals. The all-time record for the domestic terminal pre-Covid was 63,525 passengers in October 2019.
Sydney Airport anticipated almost 200,000 more passengers than the equivalent period during the 2023 September school holidays, with 1.5 million to be domestic and 1 million international.
The busiest day for domestic travel would be Friday with more than 80,000 passengers expected and Saturday for the international terminal with 52,000 passengers set to travel through the airport.
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