Teree Burr used to travel for work every month — but that has stopped because of the soaring cost of flights.
Ms Burr runs a tourism and events company in Nundle in the New England region of New South Wales and has had to cut back on business travel because of the high cost of flights from nearby Tamworth airport.
“I just simply can’t afford the outlay of the travel now, to be in Sydney. I used to be in Sydney or Melbourne at least every four weeks, once a month,” she said.
Ms Burr said the pre-pandemic $89 one-way flight from Tamworth to Sydney now costs at least $200 and flights were often cancelled.
One part of life that hasn’t got back to normal after the COVID-19 pandemic has been cheap airfares — and nowhere is the expense of flying being felt more than in country Australia.
David Beirman, adjunct fellow in management and tourism at Sydney’s University of Technology, said fares were now competitive on “heavily travelled” routes like Sydney to Melbourne and Sydney to Brisbane but in regional flights were still high.
“From their point of view, they don’t lose as many customers by ripping people off in the regions as they do if they try to rip them off between capital cities or between popular holiday destinations like the Gold Coast and the Sunshine Coast.”
A Qantas spokesperson rejected this claim.
Regional residents are set to have even fewer flights with Rex Airlines’ recent announcement that they were cutting NSW flights between Sydney and Albury, Coffs Harbour, Griffith, Narrandera, Orange, Parkes, Armidale and Port Macquarie.
A spokesman for Rex pointed to their announcement of changes to regional flights in April, citing a “chronic shortage of airline professionals, particularly pilots and engineers”, as well as disruptions to the aircraft parts supply chain.
The Bureau of Infrastructure and Transport Research Economics (BITRE) collects airline data on domestic and international flights.
BITRE’s fare index showed that domestic airfares peaked in October last year and had fallen back close to pre-COVID levels.
The cheapest available price has increased by only 11 per cent on the Melbourne to Sydney route compared with pre-COVID, but has more than doubled on the Coffs Harbour to Sydney route.
They are a third higher on the Sydney to Tamworth route.
Mr Turner said international flights out of Sydney through the Middle East were only at 70 per cent of pre-COVID levels.
The data showed that seat availability in and out of the Middle East in March this year was 60 per cent of the seat numbers in March 2019.
Capacity to the US was 78 per cent of pre-COVID levels and 93 per cent to Singapore, which Mr Turner said was reflected in cheaper airfares to those destinations.
Transport Minister Catherine King recently blocked Qatar Airways from doubling their number of flights into Australia.
Mr Turner said the federal government needed to ease restrictions on capacity.
(ABC)
