Qantas Will Finally Boost Its Domestic Operations

Qantas is boosting its domestic capacity starting in March 2023 as airline operations return to normal post-pandemic.

Qantas said that the airline would expand its east-coast and east-west services.

There will be 57 more weekly round-trip flights between Melbourne, Sydney, and Brisbane, bringing total weekly capacity back up to 93% of what it was before the pandemic hit.

Seats on Qantas’ Airbus A330 intercontinental trips to and from Perth are also increasing.

“With our operational performance now effectively back to pre-pandemic levels, we’re gradually adding more domestic capacity from early next year,” Qantas Group chief customer officer Markus Svensson said in a statement.

Svensson added: “We’re the only airline flying widebody aircraft domestically, and we know how much our Business class customers value having a lie-flat seat on longer flights to and from Perth.”

By providing double Qantas points for trips booked before February 2023, the company also encourages customers to redeem unused travel credits from the pandemic.

Qantas gave customers affected by the pandemic more leeway regarding rebooking flights and redeeming credits. The airline reports that over the previous 2.5 years, passengers have redeemed $AU 1.2 billion in travel credits.

More than 900,000 Qantas customers still have $AU 600 million in COVID credits, the airline said.