Information About

Qantaslink





HISTORY

Up until recently, Qantas had many regional subsidiaries, operating separately. However, in 2002 these airlines, including Airlink, Sunstate , Eastern Australia Airlines, and Southern Australian Airlines were brought together under one brand. A merger was seen as an intelligent idea to increase simplicity, and because the airlines all had similar fleets. However, for a short while, QantasLink took over some of the Qantas non-CityFlyer routes, like SydneySunshine Coast , using the Boeing 717 planes that Qantas had received when they took over Impulse Airlines who had failed in their attempt to become a major carrier. Also Qantas purchased some Boeing 717 aircraft for itself. However, QantasLink lost those routes, when low-cost carrier Jetstar was formed, and also lost the Boeing 717 aircraft to them. Jetstar never planned to keep all the Boeing 717s as they had purchased a number of Airbus A320 . Gradually the Airbuses are replacing the Boeings, and the Boeing 717s are going back to QantasLink, to replace BAe 146 s, which are a similar size to the Boeing 717.


FLEET

The QantasLink fleet includes the following



Expansion

The airline will also be acquiring 7 new Dash 8, 400 Series , which are due to join the fleet by early 2006 . This has surprised many aviation experts, because the series 400 aircraft have a rather large capacity. If they are planning to use these aircraft on the traditional city-county routes, for example Sydney to Dubbo , then the airline would have to half frequency because the 400 series are about twice the size of the 100 series which traditionally do that route. And it would seem that with this 400 series QantasLink would be trying to replace this ageing 100 series species, whose capacity could hardly be further from that of the new 400 series.
However there do seem to be some routes on which Qantaslink may find use for the large turboprops:
  • Sydney to Canberra - currently, (although this is not technically a QantasLink route, but Qantas uses their baby brother's dash 8 aircraft) these services are flown by both Boeing 737 s and Dash 8 . They may seek to replace some of the jet services and all of the turboprop services with the new 400 series .

  • The airline entered into the South Australian market in December 2005, with flights from Adelaide to Port Lincoln and Kangaroo Island . Interstate flights to and from Kangaroo Island were also introduced direct from and to Melbourne .


Qantaslink services in Western Australia, Queensland and the Northern Territory are contracted (since 1995 ) to National Jet Systems , hence using the QantasLink brand. The hubs for QantasLink - National Jet Systems are Perth, Western Australia , Cairns, Queensland and Darwin, Northern Territory .


DESTINATIONS