Flying kangaroo hops to South America

[Matthew Chisholm]

14 March 2008

QANTAS will launch its first non-stop, direct flights to Buenos Aires three times a week from November 27 to cash in on increased traffic between Australia and South America.

The resumption of flights to South America comes six years after the national carrier was forced to abandon its one-stop service to Buenos Aires via Auckland because operations became "financially unviable", a Qantas spokeswoman said.

Qantas offered one-stop flights to Buenos Aires for four years between 1998 and 2002.

Since that service was terminated, Qantas has been offering flights to Santiago three times a week, with connections to Buenos Aires via Lan, the Chilean national carrier.

"We have maintained services to South America via our successful codeshare with Lan since then, and that relationship will continue," Qantas executive general manager John Borghetti said. "Lan Argentina is also planning to codeshare on Qantas's new Buenos Aires flights."

For the past few years, Qantas says, the South American economy has improved, with more leisure and business travellers flying between Australia and South America.

This prompted the airline to resume its direct connections to South America.

The new service will also offer connections to other destinations in South America, including Brazil. "These developments will enable us to grow business and leisure travel to and from Argentina and strengthen tourism and trade links between the two countries," Mr Borghetti said.

The new service will operate on Mondays, Wednesdays and Saturdays.

Qantas will also increase its direct flights to the US from Sydney and Brisbane, from 43 to 47 services a week, starting from March 27.

The new services will be twice-weekly flights between Brisbane and Los Angeles, one additional weekly flight between Sydney and Los Angeles and one additional weekly flight between Sydney and Honolulu.

"The additional services from Brisbane will see Qantas offer a daily, non-stop service between Queensland and California for the first time," Mr Borghetti said.

The additional flights are to meet increasing demand from travellers wanting to fly to the US given the delay to the arrival of the A380 aircraft, of which Qantas is expected to take delivery only in August.

Qantas plans to begin direct flights on the A380 aircraft to Los Angeles from October, the spokeswoman said.

The boost in services between the US and Australia was not in response to increased services from rival Singapore Airlines, which does not operate direct flights to America from Australia via the Pacific route, a Qantas spokesperson said.

Matt

[Eli B]

"the national carrier was forced to abandon its one-stop service to Buenos Aires via Auckland because operations became "financially unviable", a Qantas spokeswoman said."

i heard these flights were always full. does that mean that theere was MORE money to be made using these a/c on other routes?