QANTAS: Unlimited flight date changes. Free Beer! Free Wine! $99 seats!

Just as competition is about to hot up with REX entering the domestic market and Virgin Australia moving to its new onboard offerings, Qantas is mounting a counter-attack with:

• Unlimited flight date changes with no penalty (except fare difference)
• 1 million seat sale – fares from $99/one-way
• Free beer & wine in Economy and new hot food

Borders open/closed

Because states are opening and closing their borders at the drop of a hotel quarantine infection, people’s interstate plans can be thrown into disarray at a moments notice. To create some certainty, Qantas is allowing you to change dates as many times as you want through until at least January 2022

“To help manage the uncertainty, we’ve introduced the highest level of flexibility in the market so people can plan their next trip with confidence.” Stephanie Tully, Qantas Group Chief Customer Officer

The ‘Fly Flexible’ policy applies from today (8 February) on all new domestic Qantas and QantasLink bookings, and on Trans-Tasman services booked until the end of April 2021. You can change the date to any available flight (up to 355 days in advance). Qantas will waive the change fee but importantly not any fare difference that may apply.

Limits

Its important to note that this news is not retrospective. Previously booked flights must obey the old rules that only allow one flight change for travel until the end of June 2021.

Free Beer! Free Wine!

From now, you can get free beer and wine in Economy across domestic and regional flights. They are refreshing their hot meals too – but these are only available on flights 3.5 hours and longer – so that’s basically east to west coast, or long north – south routes like Adelaide to Darwin

$99 economy and $399 Business one way fares

The airline is offering some sale bargains to be booked from today until 15 February (that’s a week away) for travel from mid-March onwards. Here are some one-way examples Qantas has provided:

• Sydney-Byron Bay (Ballina) from $99
• Launceston-Melbourne from $99
• Adelaide-Melbourne from $109
• Brisbane-Cairns from $124
• Sydney-Hamilton Island from $164
• Melbourne-Perth from $204

I’ll be getting in on some of these!

2PAXfly Takeout

This is another timely reminder to wear your seatbelt when seated. Holding you close to your seat will protect you from the sort of injuries sustained on this flight, when unsecured passengers flew to the ceiling of the aircraft, and then came crashing down once the ‘drop’ ceased.

The hope will be that this is an anomaly – a ‘freak accident’ in casual parlance. If it is a systemic error either mechanical or electronic, then this is a larger concern for the airlines that fly Boeing Dreamliner 787 aircraft. Let’s hope it isn’t. If it is, it will pile on the woes to Boeing’s existing stack.

This is quite a necessary promotion. With competition hotting up from March with the introduction of REX on domestic flights, and with Virgin Australia bedding down its new onboard services, Qantas has been retaining its fare scales, which are way above all its competitors.

I was wondering what Qantas would do to stem the leakage to the competition that was bound to follow. Now we know: an aggressive promotion of a million low cost domestic fares.

With increased flexibility in re-booking, there is not much to hold you back . . .

Just remember, that those flexible fares don’t come with a price guarantee. You won’t pay a fee to change the booking date – but you still might be up for the fare difference, and on an east to west coast fare, even in economy, that could be a few hundred dollars.