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Qantas CEO Alan Joyce has announced Qantas’ latest plan to restart international flights from Australia. Joyce says when the airline will resume regular flights will fall in line with plan C of the national cabinet’s reopening plan, when 80 per cent of the Australian population are fully vaccinated.
“It’s obviously up to government exactly how and when our international borders reopen, but with Australia on track to meet the 80 per cent trigger agreed by national cabinet by the end of the year, we need to plan ahead for what is a complex restart process,” Joyce told the press today.
The airline’s plan to resume international flights before Christmas will initially begin with countries that have a high vaccination rate. Qantas said this could include the United States, Singapore, Japan, the United Kingdom, Fiji and Canada. The trans-Tasman bubble between Australia and New Zealand is expected to resume in mid-December.
Additionally, Qantas says it’s hoping to resume flights to Hong Kong in February, and the rest of the international network (which would include popular tourist destinations like Bali, Bangkok, Phuket and Ho Chi Minh City) would start to open up from April 2022.
But the big question still remains: will travellers still have to complete hotel quarantine? Joyce noted that demand for travel would be low if travellers still had to quarantine for 14 days when entering Australia. “[Travel uptake will] hinge largely on government decisions on alternative requirements to mandatory hotel isolation for fully vaccinated travellers,” said Joyce.
But, as we know, none of these plans are set in stone. The Qantas boss knows this. “At the moment, this is our plan; we know it could change,” said Joyce.