How long does QF take to add flights to newly re-opened borders?

[lovedbymarylane]

Hi all, does anyone remember how long it took Qantas to reinstate flights to their schedule after an announcement of borders opening?

I'm a Western Australian living in Melbourne, attempting to get back home to Perth for Christmas. There is currently only one direct QF flight a day from Melbourne to Perth (and it's very expensive and at a not-great time). It looks like the border opening will be announced this morning and I'm hoping to pounce on flights as soon as they're released, so I was wondering if anyone from other states who was perhaps monitoring this closely when their borders opened had any insights!

 

[dylarr]

Was keeping an eye on this when the QLD and VIC/SYD announcements were made. It took them about 3 hours to have the flights loaded for sale post announcement.

 

[justinbrett]

It depends whether the airlines are expecting the announcement or not. The regional NSW, Sydney and VIC announcements were all expected (and I think the airlines were planning for Sydney to open at the same time as regional NSW, but there you go).

Also they probably won't add them all at once - I know when SA opened to NSW they were very slow and it meant a lot of people were booking the higher fares.

Travel at Christmas is expensive at the best of times.

 

[aikman]

When QLD announced opening to VIC they didn't add the direct Sunshine Coast flights until the day after. The day after that was when they added the direct Gold Coast flights.

 

[lovedbymarylane]

True. Opening the WA/VIC border has been hinted at - McGowan said when VIC achieved 28 days of no community transmission, he'd 'consider' opening the border (and that happened four days ago) so there's been a bit of lead up. Fingers crossed.

 

[dylarr]

This thread is timely!

After shutting out NSW and Vic for eight months, WA is throwing the door open for Christmas

Western Australia will reopen to Victoria and New South Wales next Tuesday, allowing travellers from those states to spend a quarantine-free Christmas in the west — but border restrictions will remain for South Australia.

www.abc.net.au

Date is set: December 8 for NSW / VIC to visit WA

 

[jakeseven7]

A couple of hours usually they know how desperate families are to reunite.

The Tassie flights all got ramped up in about 3-4 hours.... They need more, there are some crazy prices around Christmas now!

 

[TheInsider]

Roster rotations for airport staff are wednesdays to tuesdays, so most likely you'll see the ramp up from the wednesday.

 

[jakeseven7]

UPDATE:
Well we were booking in our teams for work on MEL - PER and there is already a massive surge in bookings, it looks like QF have popped a couple of flights on there here and there already and they have almost sold out, we will have to wait for more flights to be loaded because the economy fare has now gone through the roof!!

 

[lovedbymarylane]

UPDATE:
Well we were booking in our teams for work on MEL - PER and there is already a massive surge in bookings, it looks like QF have popped a couple of flights on there here and there already and they have almost sold out, we will have to wait for more flights to be loaded because the economy fare has now gone through the roof!!

Huh, nothing yet for my dates, although I'm looking at MEL-PER on the 23rd and PER-MEL on the 30th. Perhaps they're concentrating on dates closest to the 8th at the moment.

 

[jakeseven7]

Huh, nothing yet for my dates, although I'm looking at MEL-PER on the 23rd and PER-MEL on the 30th. Perhaps they're concentrating on dates closest to the 8th at the moment.

Yes we are booking closer in (we have huge travel corridor between MEL and PER).

 

[justinbrett]

I am looking at expert flyer and the QF timetable and I'm hardly seeing any new flights.

 

[lovedbymarylane]

I am looking at expert flyer and the QF timetable and I'm hardly seeing any new flights.

Ooh, how can I access those? Do you need a subscription?

 

[justinbrett]

Ooh, how can I access those? Do you need a subscription?

The QF timetable is just on their website (Timetables | Qantas AU)

Yes, you need a paid subscription for expert flyer.

 

[lovedbymarylane]

If anyone is following along, flights were released for MEL<->PER in late December about half an hour ago. I booked immediately and it only took about 15 minutes for them to be ticketed. I tried to use my Amex travel credit but I guess it takes a while for flights to show up in that system and I was getting a bit anxious about fare buckets selling out so I bought directly via Qantas instead. Good luck to anyone else hoping to get home for Christmas!

 

[Melburnian1]

AFFer serfty commented in another thread that there had been discussion in AFF's 'Ask The Pilot' how there were insufficient flight crew who 'had currency' given the lengthy hiatus in flying. Many must 're qualify' via simulators.

This is leading to fewer flights being timetabled because the airlines (I don't know if it's 'only QFd', but logic suggests the three mainline operators would be affected) don't have the flight crew available to operate. Someone else chimed in and briefly claimed there was also a shortage of cabin crew.

It appears despite the hype that demand in any case is less than a year ago at the same time, but ironically above what the airlines can supply in terms of seats.

None of the A332s seem to have returned to service as of a couple of days ago but QF (former) staffer milehighclub reminded us that A333 flight crew - nine of the 10 A333s are operating on such exotic duties as freight flights SYD - PVG - can operate A332s.

 

[milehighclub]

None of the A332s seem to have returned to service as of a couple of days ago but QF (former) staffer milehighclub reminded us that A333 flight crew - nine of the 10 A333s are operating on such exotic duties as freight flights SYD - PVG - can operate A332s.

Former? I haven't gone anywhere.

 

[Blackswan]

I'm also checking the QF website every few hours - hoping to Fly PER-MEL-PER 10 - 12 December, so far only one direct on the outgoing, nothing direct on the incoming.

 

[SeaWolf]

I suspect that in addition to crews being called up, there's probably some lead time to get additional jets back in service from the storage facility.
Depending on how they've been stored will depend on how long but I imagine with the 'unboxing' and checks it could take a few weeks to get them back up in the air.

 

[milehighclub]

Depending on how they've been stored will depend on how long but I imagine with the 'unboxing' and checks it could take a few weeks to get them back up in the air.

It shouldn't take too long to get a couple up and running. There are 20 A330 'offline' but of those, 8 have recently flown within the last month. Only 2 haven't flown since March. Then add the 8 that are currently flying (one of the 333 has just come offline for maintenance), so I would say there are about 16 A330 ready to go.