Qantas ready to restart international flights, bring Australians home

Don't forget that those same planes will be departing Australia almost empty, and someone has to pay the costs of that near empty plane.

not empty at all. Plenty of people going overseas or wanting to go overseas.

Good point Phil, I would be happy to fill that empty seat to visit my boyfriend in Paris and return to Australia at a higher price than pre-Covid rather than the very high prices the other airlines have to charge at present. Obviously hotel quarantine in compulsory and that’s fine for a while until the Victorian mess is under control. By early 2021 Australians returning need to home quarantine with very heavy fines for non-compliance $50,000 would keep people home. The whole population can not be penalised for the sake of a few selfish idiots! Keep Qantas flying moving forward! 

Keeping the middle seat free is not the required 1.5m distance that is required. If this is what we are talking about it would mean every second row with 1 passenger per seat. There were many flights already operated with them full and no cases on board. The problem at the moment is you can lift the cap with regards to how many passengers can be bought into the country but this still limits the airline to what they can carry, most are operating at a loss but are being heavily subsisted by there governments. So if a plane can carry 40 Business passengers then they will charge and bump the cheaper Economy passengers, this is why people can't get home. The Government needs to charter Qantas planes that fly to London, Los Angeles, Singapore/Hong kong then at least they can be full and get Aussies home.

what does keeping middle seats free do ? Absolutely nothing.

Exactly absolutely nothing! :-) 

...except there aren't a large number of travellers allowed into Australia

A lightly loaded 787 can reach many places without the need to go through a “hub” and that’s the point. Remember LHR PER?

no, no, no.

Want an aircraft with as many seats as possible, as cheap as possible. I don't want to be subsidising the flights.

Can do a tech stop or stops in 100s of places, where passengers can probably get off, but not mingle with other airlines passengers, ie. shove them in a transit lounge by themselves.

Sharjah is a cheap port between EU & OZ. Flight could possibly continue onto NZ.

I don't want to pay anymore. Too much taxpayers funds wasted already.

Singapore is also on the UK's allowed list https://www.straitstimes.com/world/europe/england-removes-singapore-thailand-from-coronavirus-quarantine-list-adds-slovenia

Looks like it just got added today

When I checked yesterday it wasn’t

I’m an agent and had a client with an exemption who needed to fly to UK, had to go ADL-BNE with QF, BNE-TPE and TPE-LHR with CI

Booking her return flight was hard, due to the cap hardly any flights available. Had to do MAN-FRA with LH, FRA-ICN and ICN-SYD with OZ (flight to Sydney only had 1 J class seat left, all other flights are Flexi economy flights 

Very hard to get flights into Australia at the moment due to the cap 

Exactly !! Australians can fly to London from Europe and nearby countries board a Qantas plane and fly straight back to Perth!

We have credits with Qantas and would do this in a heartbeat

would qantas want to accept credits for repat charter flights ? Probably not.

I wouldn't hold my breath

William the idea is a good one but most of us are not allowed out.

Absolutely correct!

The difference is those airlines are owned by their governments (either directly or via a wholly government-owned company in the case of Singapore). Quite different from governments putting in money to airlines that are owned by private enterprise (and in VA's case, largely owned by foreign governments).

Absolutely. I am shaking my head in bewilderment at the thought of the Govt subsidising these flights, when there are literally thousands of seats a week available RIGHT NOW!!! 

If anything the Govt should be rewarding these carriers that have stayed in the market, while QF suspended everything almost immediately. 

Exactly. I'd be happy to be made to stay in a hotel, provided said hotel had usable internet access and the room had a fridge and microwave (and I can order in my own food).

The moment they try to charge me for their requirement of staying in a hotel, instead of at home, is the moment there is a problem.

If governments are going to make people that they are forcing into a hotel to pay for said hotel stay, then they should only force people into the hotels who can't or won't stay at home for the required quarantine period.

Just because 10-15% of people can't be trusted to stay at home in quarantine doesn't mean that everyone who will should be punished.

Agreed, mostly. I don't even have an issue with paying for the hotel quarantine, but not having the choice of where I stay, or what food I eat, is where I draw the line. Especially having seen some of the conditions people are being imprisoned in. The majority of self-isolated travellers in home-quarantine at the beginning (myself included) did the right thing, yet here we are, all being punished.

Couldn't agree more. Self-iso was more than acceptable, and would mitigate the need for these caps.

I got back in the window where self-isolation was permitted, and I did the right thing, but nobody checked that - if they put some rigid checks into place to ensure people were abiding by it (which they clearly can with the iron curtain around Melbourne now), then problem more or less solved.

I'm not sure we can trust people to self-isolate, given Melbourne's experience when they returned to Lockdown.  Police, how were checking on people who tested positive found 25% were not at home.  And might have been spreading the virus.  It is unfortunate that we have to plan procedures on the basis of the selfish attitudes of a significant number of people who sabotage the measures being taken to control the pandemic.  The safest method is to quarantine those within the country who test positive, and those entering from overseas, with no exceptions.

Those reports were overstated. The numbers reported were people who didn't answer the door when officials (either police, ADF or Vic Health) went to check on them.

Later investigations found that the majority of those were people who didn't hear the door knock (eg asleep, in shower, in another part of property or outside for 'exercise' which was allowed at the time).

Most people are, and have been shown to be, willing to self isolate when required. The numbers of those unwilling to has remained consistent all year. ~10% of people on self isolation orders are not willing to, or are unable to, follow the rules and remain at home when instructed. Yet the other ~90% are punished.

Richard generally I agree with you with the idea of shorter quarantine (probably more than 3 days though) but the number of positive tests after day 10 thet have occurred is a worry and quarantining at home with a tracker is fine, but how do we stop visitors. As we have seen it only takes one for a cluster of quite a few to emerge.

I did not mean leave after 3 days if clear. At least all would know if infected by then. Stay the full 10 days in isolation.

Richard as I said some are coming up positive several days after a day 3 test. Not a lot but enough to warrant some more monitoring if let out. The real issue is visitors. I read that Canada has a very big fine indeed.

I don't see facility quarantine ending before Dec 31 at the very earliest, but more likely June 30, 2021 as the treasurer indicated a couple of weeks back. Unfortunately, Australia is in the same category when it comes to imposing quarantines at hotels or government facilities as New Zealand, Thailand, Malaysia and China, among others.

Spot on Richard - Australia is now LA-LA land! 

However, the Australian Airforce or Navy has few if any planes that are suitable for carrying large numbers of civilians.  Even if they did, the costs of operating such flights are very high when you consider the amount of fuel they use, and the need to hire contract flight attendants for such trips to be operated by a Defence Force.  And do you expect the Air Force or Navy to start learning how to issue tickets to large numbers of passengers and learn how to provide catering to a large number of passengers?  In other words, leave long-haul transport of civilians to an airline that is experienced in doing it every day.

Virgin no longer has the capacity to operate long haul charters considering the new owners Bain are preparing to return the A330 to their lessors and preparing the 777s for long term parking in the American Desert.

The RAAF owns 5-10 A330’s with 250-300 seats, and the RAAF employs full time flight attendants. And the fuel burn is the same as commercial jets, and the government own the fuel (doesn’t tax itself) 

Agree. Or they could just let the heaps of existing inbound flights carry more than 50 pax. Doesn't even need QF to restart.

any australian airline is a flag carrier. qantas is 49% owned.

Both Qantas and Virgin were paid by the government to operate subsidised repatriation flights in March/April.

There are no quarantine hotels for them - the cap is causing the issue not the flights

ljcoz

there are literally 100s & 100s of hotels capable of being used for quarantine. What do you mean ?

My guess is the situation is the same as in Thailand. Some hotels have volunteered to become quarantine hotels, but of all the hotels available, only relatively few have been chosen (or approved) by the government. That limits incoming arrival numbers.

One possible reason why not any hotel can be chosen is the strict conditions under which the quarantine must take place, and to a lesser extent perhaps, some hotels and presumably customers too, believe that there's an "infection risk" emanating from staying at a hotel being used for quarantine purposes. Therefore, a duality emerges - two types of hotels - quarantine hotels which are only used for quarantine purposes for incoming travellers (international and domestic in some states) and tourist/business hotels that don't accept quarantined arrivals but function in their normal manner for domestic travellers.

The issue is that if you double the caps it is just not only beds but a whole support infrastructure. If you increase to 1,000 a day say in Sydney you need 14,000 beds just for that days arrivals. 10 days later before you have let any of those from day 1 out you are using over 100,000 beds plus thousands of support staff.

don't send them to SYD. SYD is a mess already.

CNS is perfect, Hilton is currently closed. Not sure it max occupancy, but just say it had 400 rooms. Most will be travelling with 1 other person, so that's 800 people can be accommodated & that's just 1 hotel.

Army can do security.

Room service/bar staff can deliver meals.

How many more staff are actually needed ? Not many.

Regular that means around 80 per day or a silk air 737 every other day. It could work as long as there was a return load unless they load it with seafood.

a more economical way is to bring in 500 at one time/flight.

That depends on if there are backloads of non Aussies and freight. A one off flight or one a week even may not be as economic as a daily 737. Returning people may prefer more frequent options.

happy to pay but can't get in due to caps on numbers entering

That's not how the government sees things. Currently everyone pays - Australian citizens, PR, approved categories of foreigners (international students etc.) I believe Australian citizens demonstrating genuine hardship may be eligible for a loan to cover the quarantine costs, but this must be repaid later.

What constitutes an "expat"? Australian citizens should always be treated preferentially, it's our country. There should never be double standards based on residency - it should be based on citizenship.

Some countries even charge foreigners more than locals for the quarantine costs, but I've never heard of a country treating it's own citizens like second class citizens just because they don't normally reside in the country of their passport nationality. 

Yes, perfect reasoning. For the Australian government to be blind to simple options like this is absurd. 

airlines not gouging at all, but with insanely low limits, only business class is available & the top business class fares at that.

While 100s of hotels in places like cairns are nearly empty.

Whether have 10 or 400 staying in one hotel, surely that still requires same numbers of army personnel to look after them & army personnel are being paid anyway, so very little cost.

Don't think army people get overtime ????????

Boeing you also need a big fat fine for visitors.

Is it legal to deny access to a passport without an active criminal case?

one begats the other, the caps are there because they state the system can't cope otherwise

Darry from March they found it was higher than a couple of per cent. remember the Ruby Princess all told to self isolate immediately and then we saw what happened several hundred infections later. There is enough breaking loose lockdown rules let alone full self isolation in a separate room etc 

Vannan qantas have cargo flights to all sorts of places including A333s to Asia and its own cargo planes 747s I think to the US.

The website ‘The Qantas Source’ has the cargo schedules for the A333s.

Vannn I just checked and qantas operates a 747F, a 767F and a 757F plus a whole bunch of A333s regionally with belly cargo and it is easy to google their schedule Air New Zealand has one 777-200 freighter.  LATAM has more freighters 10 767s but they won’t come to Australia and  four 777f I presume some of those come to Australia. Air canada has converted 777s some of which come to Australia. It is up to Qantas and they have not returned the leases on the cargo planes. There is money in cargo and I looked it up. Qantas does fly cargo flights to Singapore, the schedule can be found;  so well done Singapore to get a government subsidy to fly lobsters ex WA. I am not sure what the ‘think I know refers to’. Qantas leases from Atlas air not the other way round as you suggest.

Patrickk Qantas has 1 767F, 2 747F owned by qantas but operated by atlas air, half the time on non Australian routes and 737Fs are only for domestic use, you are a kid, you don't need to have freighted aircraft to do cargo only flights, like I said Air NZ flies between Brisbane and LA direct flights with 787 just like many other, if you knew anything about aviation you would know thats really uncommon, foreign airliners come to Australia and fly passenger aircraft on cargo only flights while Qantas does nothing but a few Asian flights, they are using the opportunity to put their foot on their stuff and unions and while doing so punishing all of Australia, air freight is more expensive to and from Australia than just about anywhere else in the world, qantas carries less than 20% of international air cargo for Australia while Air NZ carries more than 60% for NZ, reading some numbers out of wiki doesn't give you full picture kiddo

Vannnn I thing we are looking at different websites  according to the website I checked  Qantas wet leases two Atlas Air Boeing 747-8F and as I said they use the A333s regionally in Asia: Hong Kong, Tokyo and Singapore. (which is where the action is), but without passengers, which as you say, and I agree with, is really uncomnon.. They may even use 737s to NZ. You cant say they do nothing then say they do something. As I said the 'Qantas Source' has these schedules. Is the 20% you refer to for the last six months. As the QF passenger share is a little over 20% the it is natural for freight to be the same or similar: not sure why you are suggesting it some how is remarkable, I am a little puzzled by the 'you are a kid', comment. I'm a bit long in the tooth for that sobriquet, so I may take it as a compliment. At my age we need every one we can get!!!

Patrickk I'm not looking at any website, I've worked in the industry long enough to know what's going on, qantas will never fly their old 737 converted freighters on top of ocean to the NZ, especially when they don't even have enough domestic capacity and again you have foreign aircraft flying with QF signs even on domestic routes. When passanger aircraft stops carrying people and luggage suddenly they have a lot of room for cargo, which is what every Normal airline does, there were many unprofitable routes that Qantas was operating before covid that can be profitably operated now but they prefer to push against industry, they know government wouldn't let last airline on an island country fail so they want to use the opportunity so you have foreign airliners benefiting

I was thinking of their newer passenger 737s to NZ with freight. They could also do lobster Perth to Singapore.

By the way vannn these are pretty well daily flights to each of those cities and Shanghai as well. There is even a Melbourne Perth Singapore A333 flight for lobsters.

GoRobin the way things are going in Europe and Canada etc we may be the only place outside of Asia without a lockdown.

Love it! That gets my vote 😁

P and as well as trackers or a stamp on the back of the hand a la India they can add a big fat fine for visitors and regular door knock checks.

we propose that governor general get scomo in for a serious talk & tell him, that if he doesn't get his act together & open absolutely everything & start ignoring state premiers, that he'll get the boot, just like whitlam.

Not long not for qld & NZ elections.

Bob you seem to forget the government is basically banning Australians from leaving  ( so no passengers) and Qantas has quite big cargo capacity happening with four passenger A333s at least on the job, as well as the two 747Fs plus a 767F, hardly a shabby effort on the cargo front. Qantas isn’t asking the government to foot the cargo bill. Others on this forum  seem to suggest the government is paying SQ to carry cargo which is indeed odd.