Qantas and Jetstar are preparing to fly more than 350,000 customers across Australia over the next four days, with NSW, WA and the ACT starting school holidays this weekend.
Both airlines carried similar numbers of customers domestically last weekend for the start of school holidays in Victoria and Queensland with the work done over the past two months to improve the customer experience ensuring things ran relatively smoothly.
Both airlines have been putting in place measures to improve their operations and working with airports and suppliers to ensure customer disruptions are minimised over the holiday period.
As international travel continues to pick up, Qantas has resumed direct transfers for customers arriving off international flights at Sydney Airport and connecting to domestic flights.
This means customers can check in and be security screened for their domestic flight in the international terminal and be transferred by bus across the tarmac to the domestic terminal.
Each day up to 1600 customers (and their bags) will use the service making it easier and faster to connect to their domestic flights and help ease congestion in the domestic terminal.
Since April, the airlines have also:
- Recruited more than 1000 operational team members, including cabin crew, airport customer service, pilots and engineers. Hundreds of additional contact centre staff have helped reduce Qantas’ average call wait times to below pre-COVID levels.
- Put more staff on standby to minimise any impact of sick leave or COVID-isolation requirements. Qantas has 20 per cent more team members on standby rosters and its ground handling suppliers have 15 per cent more employees.
- Made operational changes to improve on time performance, such as more dual door boarding for a more efficient experience and spreading flight departure times to ease congestion.
- Deployed extra staff to assist at check-in and manage queues.
- Put several hundred corporate head office team members on standby to help in baggage areas and check in at Sydney and Melbourne airports should they be required.
Qantas has also rolled out new check-in and baggage kiosks in Sydney, Cairns and Townsville, speeding up customers’ journey.
Two additional wide-body Qantas aircraft (an Airbus A330 and Boeing 787) are on standby to assist if required.
We thank customers for their patience during what is traditionally a very busy time and thank our people for their hard work over these school holidays and beyond.
Advice for customers
As holiday makers prepare for their trips, Qantas and Jetstar are reminding travellers to check-in online and arrive at domestic airport around two hours ahead of their scheduled departure time.
Qantas and Jetstar have seen many customers redeem their flight credits from COVID-related cancellations over the school holidays and encourage other customers to redeem their flights credits.
Most popular destinations
The most popular domestic destinations for travellers these holidays include Cairns, Perth, Gold Coast and the Sunshine Coast. Internationally, flights to London, Rome, the United States, Bali and Queenstown are extremely popular.
