International flights set to soar in ’24
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More destinations, more airlines and lower fares, plus the end of the long-running Qantas terminal saga, are on the Perth Airport radar for 2024.
Fare levels are expected to moderate as capacity grows, although it may be the later in the year before that becomes reality.
South African Airways has announced it is restarting its popular Perth-to-Johannesburg service from April 28, facilitated by the delivery of three aircraft this month.
Speaking to Southern and East African Tourism Update late last year, SAA sales, marketing, e-commerce and distribution general manager, Carla da Silva, said the airline had secured leases on aircraft to support its 2024 corporate plan.
Ms da Silva said the availability of aircraft had allowed SAA to focus on resuming routes, following a period of about 18 months during which the airline was grounded due to bankruptcy.
It resumed pared-back services in September 2021 and has slowly been reintroducing flights and operations.
However, the Perth flight is only expected to be three times weekly, rather than daily, which will put pressure on pricing.
Thai Airways has also announced the resumption of Perth flights with a daily Boeing 787 service to Bangkok from March 31, with bookings now open.
The Thai fleet was cut to just 65 from 103 during COVID, when the airline went into a court-supervised bankruptcy debt-restructuring process.
However, for those who love Thailand, Jetstar plans to significantly expand its network out of Perth in 2024, with new direct flights to Phuket, and Bangkok.
A similar service will operate to Singapore.
As part of its Western Australian expansion, Jetstar will open a Perth pilot base for at least 60 pilots, and base four aircraft in the WA capital, including the newest aircraft in its fleet – the Airbus A321neoLR – which has greater range.
Basing pilots and aircraft in Perth will allow Jetstar to grow its domestic and international network. More new routes will be announced in coming months.
Late last year, Jetstar Group chief executive Stephanie Tully said the airline was making a huge investment in its Perth operations.
“Having pilots and aircraft based in the west gives us the ability to add hundreds of thousands more low-cost seats to exciting new destinations across both our international and domestic network,” she said.
“These three new routes will open up low fares travel right across South-East Asia for our west coast customers, including easy connections via Singapore onto Jetstar Asia’s extensive network to 13 destinations throughout Asia.”
With far great range, Jetstar’s new A320 models open up numerous destinations in Asia to non-stop flights.
The airline has also announced a three-times weekly service between Sydney and Busselton starting on March 26.
The big news from Qantas is the Paris non-stop Boeing 787 flight, which starts on July 12. This service will add an additional 75,000 seats to and from Europe every year.
Qantas’s Paris service will offer customers the option of connecting to more than 70 destinations across Europe, including Barcelona, Munich, Frankfurt and Athens, and 12 destinations within France through the Qantas network of partners.
A circle fare will also allow Qantas customers to fly into Paris and return to Australia from London or Rome on the same ticket.
Unlike the seasonal Perth-Rome flight, the Paris flight will operate four days per week during the peak European summer, then move to three per week from mid-August 2024 for the rest of the year.
The airline will almost certainly reach agreement with Perth Airport on a comprehensive terminal-runway deal that will involve a small extension to its current T3 International terminal. The arrangement will allow for additional quarantine facilities, a move to the eastern side of the airport within five years, and a go-ahead on the new parallel runway.
An in-principle agreement is understood to have been reached, with final contracts being finalised.
This agreement will facilitate Qantas’s capacity to operate flights to and from Johannesburg and Jakarta, which were announced in 2022 and then shelved because of a lack of quarantine inspection facilities at T3 International for inbound flights.
Johannesburg and Jakarta are deemed high-risk cities from a quarantine perspective.
By mid-2024, Qantas says, it will be back to pre-COVID international capacity.
Cathay Pacific Airways will operate a daily service from February with the Boeing 777-300ER, with those aircraft slated for cabin upgrades.
Last year, Cathay chief executive Ronald Lam told Business News the upgrade would start in the second quarter of this year.
“We are going to retrofit our 39-strong 777-300ER fleet with a new business class cabin, and we have named the new product Aria Suite, which will feature sliding doors,” Mr Lam said.
“And we’ll have a new premium economy cabin as well.”
The airline will scrap first class in its 777-300ERs and instead have a three-class configuration.
From 2025, Cathay will put its new first-class cabin onto the Boeing 777-9 and that aircraft will have a four-class configuration: first, business, premium economy and economy.
Following that introduction, Cathay will take stock of its regional fleet, in particular the A330, with a new product.
Singapore Airlines is now moving to four flights a day.
In November, the airline added four flights a week to its three-times-daily Boeing 787-10 service; from March 31, the additional flights become a fourth daily service.
The additional service will be operated by an Airbus A350-900, which has 303 seats (40 business and 263 economy) bringing 220,584 more seats to the Perth market annually.
Putting that increase in perspective, Singapore Airlines announced a fifth daily flight just before COVID.
Emirates is expected to introduce A380s fitted with its premium economy seating later this year, opening up new and exciting travel options.
The airline’s premium economy is getting rave reviews and is available to 13 destinations.
Emirates is upgrading 67 A380s and 53 Boeing 777-300ER cabins and, upon completion in June 2025, more than 4,000 premium economy seats will be installed.
Destinations where premium economy is available include London Heathrow, Sydney, Melbourne, Auckland, Christchurch, Singapore, Los Angeles, New York JFK, Houston, San Francisco, Mumbai, Bengaluru and Dubai.
The AirAsia Group is also increasing flights and adding a destination.
The group now serves Bali 25 times a week under the Indonesia AirAsia banner, and Kuala Lumpur once a day with an A330 in the colours of AirAsia X.
In March, AirAsia Malaysia will also operate from KL to Perth, with an Airbus A321neo complementing the AirAsia X A330 service.
From June, the group will add a Perth-to-Kuching service, although a frequency has not yet been announced.
China Southern Airlines, which was operating a Boeing 787 service to Perth from Guangdong prior to COVID, is expected to return this year. The airline is one of China’s largest, with 661 aircraft operating to 229 destinations.
On the long-range radar is Turkish Airlines, which has just been granted extensive rights to fly to various cities in Australia.
It has 21 services a week to fly to Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane or Perth, increasing to 28 flights a week from October and 35 per week from October 2025.
Turkish, which has 400 aircraft operating to 340 destinations, plans to operate non-stop flights from Istanbul to these cities.
Services to Melbourne are expected to start in June.