Australia opens in 2 days and the flights are surprisingly empty

UPDATE 5 Nov '21: I've been checking every one of Qantas' flights departing LAX since the reopening and every one of them has had 30+ empty seats... Make of that what you will.

 

As I mentioned before:

The second half of the reopening – allowing foreign tourists to enter Australia – will be greatly affected by these new flights' ability to draw down the number of "stranded" Australians abroad. The Prime Minister felt they needed to get these folks home before allowing foreigners to compete for seats on these flights.

Given that, you'd think that the soon-to-resume Qantas flights from Los Angeles to Sydney would be packed to the gills. But no. Here's the first post-reopening flight's seat map:

Now, keep in mind that those seats are currently going for $1200 each – literally 10x cheaper than they were going for before the reopening. The 5 flights following this one are similarly cheap, and similarly empty (see seatmaps below), even though it's being operated by a 787 instead of their usual A380 Superjumbo. 

Given the very limited alternatives, most everyone returning to Australia from the Americas routes through LAX or SFO. We've long suspected that these 50,000 "stranded" people weren't exactly stranded – like it always seemed to boggle our minds that staying in the US/Canada/UK/etc for 2 unplanned years was somehow cheaper than the $10,000 plane ticket these folks cold have bought to come home, but I'll confess to having zero data to support that theory and lots of personal bias.

One way or the other, these flights being relatively empty is probably good news for the borders reopening to foreign tourists.

 

1 Nov

3 Nov

5 Nov

7 Nov