Qantas services to north halved
TOGETHER IN ISOLATION
QANTAS has halved the number of flights from Brisbane to Townsville in the wake of huge cost cuts.
The company announced yesterday it had cut thousands of jobs as international flights were stopped amid the level-4 travel ban.
Across the company, 60 per cent of domestic flights were cut, including all Jetstar flights to Mackay and Hamilton Island.
Qantas will fly between Brisbane and Townsville just 14 times, down from 36 return flights a week.
Townsville-mackay-rockhampton return flights will occur seven times a week while the Townsville to Mount Isa via Cloncurry service will occur nine times a week.
Brisbane to Mount Isa services are still under review.
The Brisbane to Townsville wages bill is more than $4 billion a year. With the huge drop in revenue we’re facing, we have to make difficult decisions to guarantee the future of the national carrier.
“We’ll have 150 aircraft on the ground and sadly there’s no work for most of our people. Rather than lose these highly skilled employees we’ll need when this crisis passes, we are instead standing down twothirds of our 30,000 employees until at least the end of May.”
Mr Joyce said since the crisis started, there had been overwhelming support from Qantas customers.
“That gives me even more confidence that we’ll get through this,” he said.
Qantas has requested only people who were supposed to travel in the next 48 hours to contact customer service. If you made a booking through a third party site, you will need to contact the provider.