Qantas cancel: no international flights for another four months

Published by Ross Hindle on June 18th 2020, 9:09am

Australian national airline Qantas have announced that they will be cancelling all international flights until late October.

This has been announced just hours after the news from Australia's tourism minister, Simon Birmingham, that the country's borders are "likely" to be closed until 2021.

Qantas and its subsidiary, Jetstar, are looking instead to raise the number of domestic flights they carry out in order to make up for what will undoubtedly be a huge hit to their operations.

The airline's recorded number of domestic passengers for the week beginning June 15 doubled to 64,000 from last week's figures of around 32,000.

In a statement to the BBC, the airline said: “With Australia’s borders set to remain closed for some time, we have cancelled most international flights until late October.

"We still have some flights scheduled across the Tasman in the coming months, with the expected travel bubble between Australia and New Zealand."

In his statement, Mr Birmingham said that he thought it was "more likely the case" that the Australian border would stay closed until the new year.

"I do sadly think that in terms of open tourist-related travel in or out of Australia, that remains quite some distance off."

As internal lockdown measures in Australia start to ease, Qantas has said it will look to restore some 15 per cent of its pre-pandemic domestic flights.

The airline has also added, however, that it remains ready to bring service levels up for international flights as soon as such a move is advised by the Australian government.

“Should travel between Australia and other countries open up and demand returns, we can add more flights back into our schedule."

This news is just the latest in a run of Covid-19-related service closures from across the international aviation industry.

In the UK, there continues to be heavy uncertainty about the future of budget airline Flybe, while British Airways have looked at some more inventive ways to fill up the coffers - including selling their artwork collection.

In Europe, German airline Lufthansa is set to cut 22,000 jobs by the end of the month, and across the Atlantic, Warren Buffett's investment firm Berkshire Hathaway has pulled all investment into the US aviation sector and Colombian national airline Avianca has filed for bankruptcy in an American court.

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Ross Hindle
Content Director
June 18th 2020, 9:09am

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