Qantas will shed 2,000 jobs if the court will let it. (James D. Morgan, Getty Images)
- Qantas has adjusted its timeline for restarting international flights from October to late December.
- The news comes after the Federal Budget predicted borders will reopen in mid-2022.
- "We will keep reviewing these plans as we move towards December and circumstances evolve," Qantas said.
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Qantas has adjusted its tentative timeline for relaunching international flights after Tuesday's federal budget, which made clear that Australia's borders will remain closed until mid-2022.
In a statement, Qantas confirmed it would move its planned flights from October 2021 to late December 2021, but also said that few customers had booked those flights due to the ongoing uncertainty.
Flights between Australia and New Zealand will continue as planned, in line with the trans-Tasman travel bubble.
"We remain optimistic that additional bubbles will open once Australia's vaccine rollout is complete to countries who, by then, are in a similar position, but it's difficult to predict which ones at this stage," the statement reads.
In February, as part of Qantas' half-yearly update, the airline announced that international flights would resume on October 31, which was itself a delay from a planned July relaunch. Qantas said it would bring back flights to destinations including London, Singapore and Los Angeles.
But Australia's sluggish vaccine rollout made those targets increasingly unlikely. The Budget's economic forecasting operates on an assumption that travel will reopen more widely in the middle of next year, reflecting Scott Morrison's remarks that Australia's "international borders will only open when it is safe to do so."
The late December start date, while not in line with the Budget's assumption of a mid-2022 border reopening, reflects the expectation in the modelling that Australia's vaccine program will be available to all citizens by the end of this year.
"We will keep reviewing these plans as we move towards December and circumstances evolve," Qantas said.