Travel Daily | Qantas to the Gold Coast

The flying kangaroo withdrew from the GC four years ago, but it’s now back offering three daily flights ex-SYD using B 737-800 aircraft.

Travel Daily was on the first flight with Lyell Strambi, ceo Qantas domestic who said the carrier was bringing a premium flying experience back to the region, and to date the airline had record sales for the new service.

“In the two days after Qantas put this route on sale, we sold an unprecedented 24,000 airfares in just 24 hours at the introductory price of $48 per seat, “Strambi said.

“And, we’ll continue to offer bargain airfares to OOL with the latest selling for only $85 one way.”

“We’ll have 7,000 seats a week on Qantas alone and combined with Jetstar we can offer over 30,000 seats on the route each week, and we’ll be opening our Qantas Club for 100 premium pax from the end of November,” Strambi said.

“We will be the only domestic airline operating out of the GC offering a meal and checked-in baggage to all pax as part of their airfare, no matter what time they are flying, or which class they are in.”

Pax on board QF860 were able to try out the new Sky Interior, including state-of-the-art, touch screen in-flight entertainment from Panasonic.

Strambi noted that the partnership with Emirates stands to boost inbound tourism with EK flights feeding directly into the QF domestic network, including its direct SYD-OOL flights.

“We’ve also installed Qantas Smarter Faster Check-in kiosks to reduce queues at the terminal.”

He said Qantas is investing heavily in Queensland, spending $30 million on a new maintenance base in Brisbane and another $80 million on a catering facility in the capital to be ready early next year.