Qantas and Jetstar are preparing to fly more than 350,000 customers across Australia over the next four days, with many families returning home to Victoria and Queensland at the end of school holidays in those states.

This weekend also marks the start of school holidays in South Australia and Tasmania.

Both airlines have been putting in place measures to improve their operations and working with airports and suppliers to ensure customer disruptions are minimised over the holiday period.

This includes:

• Putting more staff on standby to minimise the impact of COVID and other illness.
• Scheduling larger aircraft at peak times on flights between Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane.
• Ground handling suppliers have increased staff levels significantly in Melbourne and Sydney since the Easter school holidays
• Deploying extra staff to assist at check-in and manage queues.

We thank customers for their patience during what is traditionally a very busy time and thank our people for their hard work over these school holidays and beyond.

DISRUPTIONS

Severe weather in New South Wales and poor weather down the east coast of Australia has caused flight cancellations and delays for all airlines over the past week. Severe weather is not forecast this weekend.

Crew COVID cases have increased in recent weeks, which comes as daily cases in the community have doubled in New South Wales since last month with smaller increases in Victoria and Queensland. Additional crew on standby is helping minimise the impact this is having on flights.