Qantas has cut evening flights between Alice Springs and Adelaide, reducing the number of seats in and out of the outback town.<\/p>\n
Qantas said via a statement that the schedule change would start in October and was slated to last until March 2026.<\/p>\n
The change was “to reflect seasonality and customer demand on the route over these months,” the statement read.<\/p>\n
Tourism Central Australia CEO Danial Rochford said visitor numbers dropped over summer and carriers had been reducing capacity for the past five years.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Danial Rochford says the decision affects the livability of Alice Springs. (Supplied: Danial Rochford)<\/p>\n
“This is sad news, it’s difficult news for the community, you know strikes at the livability of the town,” he said.<\/p>\n
“I think it is, unfortunately, another challenge that we’ve had to deal with.”<\/p>\n
Mr Rochford said the Friday evening flight was particularly important to residents and business owners.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“I’ve heard examples where professionals who fly-in fly-out [of] Adelaide to service Alice Springs are having to overnight in town now because of this.”<\/p>\n
‘No care’ for NT residents<\/p>\n
Business owner and former Alice Springs resident Matthew Strawbridge flies in and out of the outback town to manage one of its major stationery suppliers.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Matthew Strawbridge flies in and out of Alice Springs to manage his business. (ABC Alice Springs: Emma Haskin)<\/p>\n
He said the decision by Qantas was disappointing and would damage his business, with estimated losses of between $2,000 and $5,000 per day.<\/p>\n
“I think they’ve forgotten about where they’ve come from and I don’t think they really care too much for Northern Territory people,” he said.<\/p>\n
Mr Strawbridge said his business spent up to $80,000 a year on flights to Alice Springs.<\/p>\n
“We use those flights to work the full week without missing any time at the office.”\u00a0<\/p>\n
With the evening flight cut it means that there would be “less people on the ground and service will go down,” he said.<\/p>\n
Mr Strawbridge said he also flew several other Adelaide-based staff to support the business because of the outback town’s staffing shortage.<\/p>\n
“We do utilise the flights for four or five other staff as well,” he said.<\/p>\n
“Now we’re going to miss out on a Monday or a Friday due to the differentials in flight times.”<\/p>\n
‘Fewer seats, higher airfares’<\/p>\n
Brad Gaddes, the Northern Territory Chamber of Commerce’s interim head of Central Australia, said it was greatly concerning that [Qantas] was cutting routes.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Brad Gaddes says Qantas’s profits are going up, but the number of seats on flights is going down. (ABC Alice Springs: Emma Haskin)<\/p>\n
“Qantas is a national carrier with deep regional heritage,” he said.<\/p>\n
“We’ve got fewer seats, higher fares, whilst they’re producing higher profits.<\/p>\n
“If you have a look at passenger numbers since 2005, overall numbers into Alice Springs have actually dropped 38 per cent since 2005.”<\/p>\n
Mr Gaddes said he would love to see Qantas supporting the Northern Territory “in a better way”.<\/p>\n
“It’s very hard for them to get away from their deep heritage roots, considering NT is in the name.”<\/p>\n
Mr Gaddes said cutting routes affected the livability of the town, ultimately making it difficult to attract and retain staff and residents.<\/p>\n
“The idea of reducing the cost is one thing, but also maintaining a minimum level of service to Central Australia is another thing.”<\/p>\n
Qantas said, in a statement, that “we may see the return of afternoon services to\/from Alice Springs in the new year as our teams constantly review flying schedules against demand.”<\/p>\n
“We’ll be able to update on this closer to the time.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Qantas has cut evening flights between Alice Springs and Adelaide, reducing the number of seats in and out…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":201903,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[126016,64,63,99,164,126017,126014,37630,12486,3861,126015,73057],"class_list":["post-201902","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-alice-springs-to-adelaide","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-business","tag-economy","tag-evening-flights","tag-flight-cuts","tag-flights","tag-outback-australia","tag-qantas","tag-route","tag-staff-shortages"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/201902","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=201902"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/201902\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/201903"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=201902"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=201902"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=201902"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}