Qantas will terminate its sole China route in July, citing profitability as the reason for the scrapping of its Shanghai flights.
Australia’s flag carrier Qantas will pull out of China within the next two months.
From July 28, the airline will scrap its Sydney to Shanghai flights. The flag carrier claims weak passenger demand as the cause for the decision.
ALSO READ: Boeing assists with SAF production in Australia
SYDNEY SHANGHAI ROUTE
Qantas currently operates five weekly flights between Sydney and Shanghai, offering just under 1,500 seats each week.
The Shanghai service is being dropped just six months after it was relaunched, following a hiatus brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic.
QANTAS SOLE CHINA ROUTE
This routing represents the only nonstop route offered by Qantas between Australia and mainland China.
The airline previously operated flights between Sydney and Beijing before the pandemic.
However, Qantas has not resumed flights on the Sydney-Beijing route.
UNIMPRESSIVE LOAD FACTORS
According to Skift, Qantas’ CEO Cam Wallace said that the airline’s restored flights to mainland China were seeing unimpressive passenger demand.
Wallace said that Qantas’ load factors were around 50%.
“Since COVID, the demand for travel between Australia and China has not recovered as strongly as expected. In some months, our flights to and from Shanghai have been operating around half full,” he said.
However, Chinese airlines supply over 28,000 seats each week on 102 flights between mainland China and Australia’s largest three cities.
TURNING TO OTHER MARKETS
The termination of Shanghai flights allows Qantas to ramp up services on other routes.
This permits the airline to scale up services to destinations which are more profitable and where higher demand exists.
MANILA ROUTE
Qantas will relaunch services between Brisbane and Manila. This complements its existing Sydney-Manila flights.
The airline will commence four weekly flights on this route from October 28. The carrier last operated the route over 10 years ago.
SINGAPORE ROUTE
Qantas will be increasing frequencies between Australia and Singapore.
Flights from Brisbane will increase from seven to nine weekly flights, from the end of October.
Between Sydney and Singapore, frequencies will increase from 14 weekly flights (double daily services) to 17 a week. This comes into effect from December.
BENGALURU ROUTE
Qantas will also expand services on its Sydney to Bengaluru route. However, this will be a seasonal increase.
Over the four-month peak holiday period, Qantas will serve the route daily.
The additional frequencies will come into effect from mid-December until the end of March 2025. Qantas currently serves the route five times a week.
