Qantas head Alan Joyce announced today that the Australian airline would resume international flights not in July, as he had originally (arguably optimistically) planned, but by the end of October 2021.
A round total of 22 international destinations, including Los Angeles, London and Johannesburg, will be available for punters to books tickets to from late October 2021. To encourage people to lock in their flights beforehand, Qantas will allow unlimited, free date changes to flights booked from today until April 2022. The only Qantas destinations missing from the list? New York, Santiago and Osaka – but would-be travellers should still be able to reach those destinations through codeshare flights or connections, said the airline.
Joyce's four-month date extension from the July estimate for international travel resuming comes on the back of the airline announcing a loss of more than AUD $1 billion between the July-December 2020 period.