As Territorians grapple with the ever-increasing cost of domestic flights, a new international route will open from Darwin, but not until the end of the year. Qantas will offer flights to Singapore from December; with local business hopeful the 60,000 additional seats will see more tourists to the Top End.
Category
📺
TVTranscript
00:00 Up, up and away to London via Singapore, Qantas revealing a second international route from
00:08 the top end.
00:09 Irrespective of whether you're going to Singapore, London, Europe or somewhere in
00:14 South East Asia, there'll be great connections on the Qantas service to London.
00:19 Taking off from December to make way for ongoing runway works, the route will fly five days
00:24 a week and expand to daily flights from March 2025.
00:29 Once the runway is completed and those flights come on, we're going to see an uptake of
00:33 tourism in, but also we're going to see outbound.
00:36 Qantas full of confidence the service will stick around, despite other competitors including
00:41 Philippine Airlines, Donghai and Malaysia Airlines all exiting the territory over the
00:46 past decade.
00:47 We think there's strong demand and that's why we've enabled ourselves to have the aircraft
00:53 available to go to five to seven services.
00:55 So we're very confident about the service.
00:57 The offering not part of the government's aviation attraction scheme, but there's hope
01:02 the addition will put pressure on prices.
01:04 It's got reach into Asia, it's got reach into Europe, it's going to put some competition
01:10 back into the market which will be really good for the consumer.
01:13 I think it's a great announcement.
01:16 Qantas will now go head to head with Singapore Airlines who already covers the route from
01:20 Darwin.
01:21 The Asian airline is also set to add more flights from April, heating up competition.
01:27 The opposition welcoming the extra airline, but says the issue of crime and population
01:31 growth is holding the territory back.
01:33 We know that we can get more airlines here in the territory if we have a strong economy.
01:38 To do that we need to get our law and order under control and of course that will repair
01:43 the territory's reputation, including the reputation that our airlines see.
01:48 More choice for Territorians with hopes it will stick around.
01:51 [BLANK_AUDIO]