Christmas log jam in Hobart
The reducing of services between Melbourne and Hobart has resulted in the development of an extraordinary situation with no seats are available on any flight into Hobart from Melbourne on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday next week.
The situation is creating chaos for business travellers scheduled to hold meetings in Hobart next week, who now find they cannot get to Tasmania’s capital city except on Sunday or Thursday.
It is believed to be the first time such a lack of airline capacity has affected Hobart for a sustained period and urgent talks were held yesterday between Tourism Tasmania CEO Felicia Mariani and Qantas about improving access to Hobart.
Both Qantas and Jetstar in the past year have reduced the number of daily flights and total passengers able to fly to Tasmania, particularly Hobart.
State Tourism Minister Paula Wriedt said yesterday she was perturbed by the looming shutdown in access from Melbourne to Hobart next week adding “I will continue to actively encourage airlines to increase flights but at the end of the day it is unfortunately a commercial decision that each airline must make.”
Tourism Council of Tasmania CEO Daniel Leesong said while it was encouraging to see incoming planes fully booked, it did Tasmania no good if travellers who wanted to come here were turned away because of flight access problems adding, “In some ways it’s a great problem to have, but it needs to be resolved if it continues”.
The first flight from Melbourne to Hobart next week is on Thursday, but even then the cheapest one-way ticket is a mighty $219 per person with Jetstar, with prices not falling below $200 until Christmas Eve.
The flight access problem from Melbourne is not confined to Hobart with even the alternative of flying from Melbourne to Launceston and hiring a car to drive to Hobart for business appointments out of the question, with all flights to Launceston for the same three days booked out.
None of the three domestic airlines, Jetstar, Virgin Blue or Qantas is prepared to put extra flights on to alleviate the bottleneck, but Qantas is however looking at switching the type of planes that fly the Melbourne-Hobart route next week from 737s to 767s, which would enable it to offer 24 extra seats per flight.
Plenty of flights are still available in the other direction, from Hobart to the mainland.
Report by The Mole
John Alwyn-Jones
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