Foreign airlines also said they would make thousands of seats available in and out of Melbourne after Victorian premier Daniel Andrews confirmed on Friday he would follow NSW and lift all quarantine restrictions on vaccinated Australian residents returning home from overseas on November 1.
Qantas said on Friday that the reopening of state and international borders in the coming months meant all 11,000 employees who remain stood down would be back at work in December - something not expected until June next year.
“Australians rolling up their sleeves means our planes and our people are getting back to work much earlier than we expected,” Qantas chief executive Alan Joyce said at a press conference at Sydney Airport with prime minister Scott Morrison and NSW premier Dominic Perrottet.
“This is the best news we’ve had in almost two years and it will make a massive difference to thousands of our people who finally get to fly again.”
Victoria’s announcement prompted Qantas to bring forward the restart of flights from Melbourne to London (stoping once in Darwin) from December 18 to November 6, while flights to Singapore would come forward from December 18 to November 22.
Foreign carriers, which have continued to fly into Australia through the pandemic with tight passenger caps in line with quarantine capacity, will make more seats available.
Singapore Airlines will fly close to 4250 seats into Melbourne a week from November 1, a spokesman for the airline said, while Cathay Pacific will return to its full pre-COVID capacity with nine weekly return flights between Melbourne and Hong Kong.
Qantas had flights from Sydney to New York and London scheduled from November 1, and earlier on Friday said it would bring forward the restart of flight from Sydney to Fiji (December 7, previously December 19), Johannesburg (January 5, previously March), and Bangkok (January 14, previously March). Budget arm Jetstar will return to Phuket on January 12, more than two months earlier than previously planned.
Anticipating a faster recovery in travel demand, Qantas said it will bring two of its Airbus A380s out of deep storage in the Mojave Desert to operate on flights to Los Angeles from April 2022. Another three will return to service from November 2022, and the remaining five will return in early 2024.
Qantas had intended to leave its superjumbos in storage until the end of 2023, and in August said five would return from mid-2022.
The airline said it would look at bringing forward delivery of three new Boeing 787 Dreamliners which have been in storage since the start of the pandemic.
