Yahoo Finance Qantas starts selling international flights from July
Qantas has begun selling seats on international flights across its entire network that take off from 1 July this year.
This includes flights to the USA and the UK, which are both grappling with the COVID-19 pandemic and seeing thousands of new cases every day in the tens or hundreds.
The airline has also made flights to Singapore, Hong Kong and Japan available from 1 July.
The Australian government’s international travel ban is still in place and has not indicated when it will lift.
The only exception is New Zealand, whose residents are able to enter Australia without quarantining if they have not been at a designated outbreak location – but Aussies aren’t allowed to travel to New Zealand without an exemption.
Qantas had previously indicated that routes to America and the UK were off the table until October this year.
However, a Qantas spokesperson told Executive Traveller that the carrier was now selling global tickets off the “expectation that international travel will begin to restart from July 2021.”
“We continue to review and update our international schedule in response to the developing COVID-19 situation,” the spokesperson said.
In late November, Qantas CEO Alan Joyce revealed that overseas travellers would likely have to prove that they had received the COVID-19 vaccine through some form of an electronic passport.
“What we are looking at is how you can have a vaccination passport, an electronic version of it, that certifies what the vaccine is, is it acceptable to the country you are travelling to," Joyce told Nine at the time.
“We are looking at changing the terms and conditions to say for international travellers that we will ask people to have the vaccination before they get on the aircraft,” Joyce added.
“But certainly for international visitors coming out and people leaving the country (Australia), we think that's a necessity.”
Yahoo Finance has reached out to Qantas for further comment.
Not every flight path is back, however; some key destinations are missing from the July 2021 roster, according to Executive Traveller, such as New York.
Direct flights between Brisbane-Chicago and Sydney-Santiago are also missing.
Yahoo Finance has reached out to Qantas for further comment.
Want 2021 to be your best (financial) year yet? Follow Yahoo Finance on Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram and Twitter, and subscribe to the free Fully Briefed daily newsletter here.
