Australia’s Qantas Group, which includes the Qantas stable of airlines and low-cost Jetstar, has noted that new aircraft deliveries and wet-leasing arrangements will help boost international capacity by 12 percentage points by the end of the calendar year – an increase of almost 50 additional flights a week.
This includes Qantas resuming its Sydney-Shanghai services and starting two new routes, Brisbane-Wellington and Brisbane-Honiara, as well as a new Jetstar service from Brisbane to Tokyo.
Sydney-Shanghai Pudong will resume on 29 October with five weekly rotations.
Flights will depart Sydney every Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday and Sunday at 1055, arriving in Shanghai same day at 1830.
Qantas will deploy its A330-200 aircraft to Shanghai. These come in a two-class configuration with 27 or 28 lie-flat business class seats in a 1-2-1 configuration and between 224 and 243 seats in economy class configured 2-4-2.
On Sydney-Shanghai, Qantas will compete with its airline partner China Eastern Airlines, which will fly the route 11 times a week with A350-900 aircraft this winter.
Separately, Qantas this week confirmed that it would launch new routes between Brisbane and Honiara in the Solomon Islands, as well as Brisbane-Wellington.
As a further boost to its Brisbane base, Qantas also has confirmed the launch of a new Jetstar service between the Queensland capital and Tokyo.
Jetstar is Qantas’ low-cost carrier, with Boeing 787 Dreamliner aircraft operating medium- and long-haul Jetstar services.
Moreover, Australian oneworld member Qantas on 25 September said that it would invest a further A$80 million (US$51 million) in customer improvements across FY24 in addition to the A$150 million previously budgeted, which will be funded from profits.
Qantas notes that this additional investment is aimed at addressing a number of customer ‘pain points’ through improvements such as better contact centre resourcing and training, an increase in the number seats that can be redeemed with frequent flyer points, more generous recovery support when operational issues arise, as well as a review of longstanding policies for fairness and improvements to the quality of inflight catering.
