Qantas Relaunches Seasonal Sapporo Flights

Matt Graham
Qantas A330-200 is returning to Hokkaido, Japan
Qantas is returning to Hokkaido. Image: Qantas.

Direct Qantas flights from Sydney to Sapporo will return later this year, just in time for the Christmas holidays and Japanese ski season. The 3x weekly seasonal flights will run from 15 December 2025 until 28 March 2026.

The flights will operate to Sapporo’s New Chitose Airport, the largest airport on the Japanese island of Hokkaido. New Chitose Airport is a gateway to popular ski resorts such as Niseko, Rusutsu and Furano.

Hokkaido has become extremely popular with Australian travellers, particularly for its skiing during the northern winter. Sapporo also hosts a popular annual snow and ice festival, which runs in early February.

The new Qantas service will be the only direct flight between Australia and Sapporo since the last time Qantas ran seasonal Sydney-Sapporo flights in 2019-20. Qantas offered a very similar service during that period, with A330-200 flights running on the same days and with almost identical timings. However, the flight numbers previously used for this route were QF39/40.

“We know Sapporo is an extremely popular winter destination for Aussies who love the snow and we’re excited to make it even easier for them to reach Hokkaido’s world-class ski resorts with a direct fight from Sydney,” Qantas International CEO Cam Wallace said.

“We last flew to Sapporo in early-2020 and had extremely positive feedback from customers, so we’re looking forward to operating this route again.”

Qantas Sydney-Sapporo schedule

Qantas’ Sydney-Sapporo flights will again be operated by Airbus A330-200s and run on Mondays, Wednesdays and Saturdays. The flight time in both directions is just under 11 hours.

This is the full schedule from 15 December 2025:

  • QF107 Sydney (SYD) 09:05 – Sapporo (CTS) 17:55
  • QF108 Sapporo (CTS) 19:40 – Sydney (SYD) 09:05 (+1 day)
QF107 will fly three times per week to CTS Sapporo during ski season
QF107 will fly three times per week to Sapporo over the Japanese ski season. Image: Qantas.

The internationally-configured A330-200 has 27 lie-flat Business seats and 228 Economy seats.

Qantas A330-200 international Economy Class
Qantas A330-200 international Economy Class. Photo: Qantas.

Booking a seat with frequent flyer points

Qantas has not yet released Classic Reward seats on this route, which only went on sale today. Last time Qantas ran Sydney-Sapporo flights, there was a smattering of Economy availability throughout the schedule and decent Business Class availability throughout February and March – but not during school holidays.

Once Classic Reward seats are released, you could expect to pay 31,500 Qantas points one-way for Economy Class or 82,000 points for Business, plus taxes & carrier charges.

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Matt Graham
The editor of Australian Frequent Flyer, Matt's passion for travel has taken him to over 90 countries… with the help of frequent flyer points, of course!
Matt's favourite destinations (so far) are Germany, Brazil & Kazakhstan. His interests include aviation, economics & foreign languages, and he has a soft spot for good food and red wine.

You can connect with Matt by posting on the Australian Frequent Flyer community forum and tagging @AFF Editor.
Matt Graham
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lakeman Apr 21, 2024 #1

That looks to be direct as well!

Reply Like

SeaWolf Apr 21, 2024 #2

The first question that springs to mind would be how would they operate it? They're struggling to operate the routes they have, resorting to wet leases. Where would they get the planes to add another route and wouldn't they look to start operating the wet leased routes with their own planes first?

Or perhaps they'd do it by wet leasing more planes, continuing Alan Joyce's great vision of a fully out sourced airline.

Reply Like

AIRwin Apr 21, 2024 #3

What is *Subject to borders referring to?

Reply 1 Like

henrus Apr 21, 2024 #4

That looks to be direct as well!

They were direct pre-covid

The first question that springs to mind would be how would they operate it? They're struggling to operate the routes they have, resorting to wet leases. Where would they get the planes to add another route and wouldn't they look to start operating the wet leased routes with their own planes first?

They used to use A330s and my guess is at the expense of A330 domestic services once again. Expect less A330s between SYD/MEL and PER with more domestic configured A330s used on flights around Asia.

What is *Subject to borders referring to?

That map has been constantly updated since April 2021 when they resumed international flying between AU and NZ then further revisions in Nov 2021 when international flying resumed. The subject to borders has been there ever since and I suspect no one has bothered to remove it.

Reply 1 Like

click to expand...
RSVKanga Apr 21, 2024 #5

What is *Subject to borders referring to?

This map has existed since late 2021 and has progressively been updated as QF resumed flights to exisiting destinations as well as new ones in the 3 years since, and "subject to borders" refers to Australia's dystopian COVID-19 border controls under the former Morrison Government, and it's probably that nobody has been bothered to remove that footnote.

Reply Like

SeaWolf Apr 21, 2024 #6

They used to use A330s and my guess is at the expense of A330 domestic services once again. Expect less A330s between SYD/MEL and PER with more domestic configured A330s used on flights around Asia.

They could have done that instead of the existing wet lease arrangements though but choose the out sourcing option instead for some reason. I can't imagine it would be different for this route.

Reply Like

RSVKanga Apr 21, 2024 #7

They're struggling to operate the routes they have, resorting to wet leases.

Yep, but that's a good thing because QF didn't fly to DEL, BLR, CDG, FCO, ICN, DIL, TBU as well as YVR year-round pre-pandemic - I'd say that this is a massive net gain of QF destinations since 2019, and no wonder it's putting pressure on the fleet. I agree that QF [redacted] fleet planning in the 2010s, but I think a strained fleet with more destinations is better than a more flexible and available fleet with a limited amount of destinations.

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elanshin Apr 21, 2024 #8

As much as it's popular QF probably don't have the planes to do it right now.

Maybe they'll offload it to JQ instead for the time being.

Reply 2 Likes

henrus Apr 21, 2024 #9

They could have done that instead of the existing wet lease arrangements though but choose the out sourcing option instead for some reason. I can't imagine it would be different for this route.

Crew shortages are why the Finnair A330s are wet leased for the first 2.5 years and then dry leased after, this buys them time to get A330 trained crew.

Reply Like

elanshin Apr 21, 2024 #10

Crew shortages are why the Finnair A330s are wet leased for the first 2.5 years and then dry leased after, this buys them time to get A330 trained crew.

I suspect it's more Finnair doesn't want to downsize their own crew and forcing QF to wet lease means QF pays AY to keep more of their staff around.

Reply 3 Likes

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