Summary
- Qantas and Jetstar expect their busiest holiday season since 2019-2020, with over 8.5 million passengers to be carried over December and January.
- Qantas has implemented various measures to make sure a smooth travel experience, including extra aircraft on standby and increased reserve staff numbers.
- International travel is slowly recovering, with Qantas operating around 90% of its pre-COVID capability for international flights.
Although Christmas remains to be ten days away, today is the one biggest day of travel of the 2023 holiday period across the Qantas Group airlines, with greater than 150,000 passengers queueing as much as get onboard. It’s such an enormous day that Qantas has placed certainly one of its Airbus A380s on standby as an operational spare aircraft to step in immediately should a serious disruption occur.
The pressure is on for Qantas and Jetstar
Airlines have at all times had detailed contingency plans in place for disruptions on peak travel days, but ever since its extremely damaging meltdowns in 2022, Qantas has made sure the general public knows what those plans entail. With polarizing former CEO Alan Joyce long gone, the airline is hoping for a trouble-free summer season, and this week, it announced a raft of measures to be sure that happens.
Photo: Ryan Fletcher | Shutterstock.com
December and January are Australia’s peak holiday months, and between them, Qantas and Jetstar, the group’s low-cost carrier, expect to hold greater than 8.5 million passengers, essentially the most the 2 have carried in that period since 2019-2020. The pair will carry greater than 500,000 greater than last yr’s holiday season, and it can take around 70,000 flights across the country to finish the duty.
The subsequent few weeks are also an enormous test for CEO Vanessa Hudson, who’s keen to set the airline group on a fresh course, and a part of that’s reassuring the general public that Qantas has the plans and systems in place to address the height demand, each domestically and internationally. A few of those measures include:
- Placing as much as 13 aircraft on standby as operational spares to offer extra buffers within the event of disruptions.
- Significantly boosting reserve staff numbers to fill unexpected gaps, resembling for sick leave.
- Jetstar and Qantas aircraft have had maintenance brought forward in readiness for extra demand.
- Qantas has worked with industry partners to have extra staff, resembling ground handlers and airport security screeners, available for peak periods.
- Within the last 12 months, Qantas has added almost 3,300 additional operational staff, including pilots, engineers, cabin crew and customer support people as demand increased.
Photo: Vincenzo Pace I Easy Flying
Qantas and Jetstar have lifted their performance and reliability significantly during 2023 and are actually in fine condition to get everyone where they must be over the following few months, so the general public can believe as they head to the airport for today’s crush. The group said it had invested AU$230 million ($154m) on initiatives to repair pain points and improve customer experience, including baggage tracking within the Qantas app, higher inflight catering and more generous passenger compensation when things don’t go to plan.
International is nearing full recovery
International travel is a high priority at the moment of the yr, so the group will probably be operating around 90% of its pre-COVID capability, which is predicted to be fully recovered by the center of 2024. Based on current passenger demand, which means busy times ahead for the Boeing 787 Dreamliners, Airbus A380s, A330s and A321LRs that do the international flying for Qantas and Jetstar.
Photo: Jetstar
In comparison with last summer, Qantas has greater than doubled its Australia-Japan flights as Aussies head for the northern hemisphere snow, resumed flights from Sydney to Recent York (via Auckland) and accomplished the pre-pandemic network when it resumed Sydney-Shanghai services. Timely news for families is that Jetstar is resuming its flights between Melbourne and Fiji this week, which has long been a preferred holiday spot for Australian families at Christmas time.
To make things work easily, Qantas has asked passengers to examine in online, arrive on the airport in loads of time and stay inside their checked and carry-on baggage limits. The airline also asks that everybody be patient and respectful to airport staff, crew and fellow customers, particularly at the standard bottlenecks, resembling security screening and boarding.
Are you traveling with Qantas or Jetstar this holiday season? Allow us to understand how it goes within the comments.