Qantas to restart London? *

Don’t hold your breath, but Qantas says it plans to restart international flights in time for the Christmas holidays.

The target date is 18 December, in line with ‘Phase C’ of the National Cabinet’s plan, which involves the gradual reopening of international borders once Australia reaches an 80% vaccination rate expected by that time.

The plan is to reintroduce services from Sydney to London, Los Angeles, Singapore and Vancouver.  Melbourne also starts, the London flights presumably operating as previously via Perth, with Singapore returning too.

On 19 December, the airline is scheduled to resume flights from Melbourne to Los Angeles, Brisbane to Los Angeles, Brisbane to Singapore and Sydney to both Tokyo and Fiji, followed by Sydney to Honolulu on 20 December.

The resumption depends, of course, on whether the federal government relaxes international border restrictions as per the National Cabinet’s plan, and which countries are on the Australian’s OK list.

Last week Chief Customer Officer, Qantas, Stephanie Tully, told a webinar “If it’s 14 days’ hotel quarantine, we will not get the demand we need to operate. Hotel quarantine is a demand killer.”

“Our view is hotel quarantine should be eliminated or greatly reduced.”  Only flights between Australia and New Zealand are on sale at present, for travel from mid-December 2021.  This assumes some or all borders between the two countries will reopen.

www.qantas.com

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Joe White, London

Let us hope that QF returns to these shores. I’ve tried (from Melbourne) with Singapore and Perth, with Western Australia easily the winner. From London I can overnight and do business and then take a domestic flight.