Qantas Airways Ltd. plans to fly daily non-stop flights between its Sydney, Australia hub and Vancouver International Airport (YVR) for most of January, and then settle back to offering those flights four times per week until March, Vancouver Airport Authority director of air service development Russell Atkinson told BIV yesterday.
The airline currently operates those flights three times per week on Boeing 787-9 planes, he said.
Qantas' shift to daily flights on those same 236-seat planes synchronizes with a new so-called Open Skies air agreement between Australia and Canada that goes into effect Jan. 1 and allows airlines to fly an unlimited number of non-stop passenger and cargo flights between the two nations. The agreement also allows airlines in the two countries to fly non-stop to any point in the other country.
Atkinson, however, said that he does not believe that the new rules allowing unlimited non-stop flights is playing a role in Qantas' decision because that airline today could fly more frequently on the YVR - Sydney Kingsford Smith Airport (SYD) route if it wanted to.
"The Open Skies agreement has been reached, which, from our perspective, is a really good thing," he said. "It just provides certainty moving forward, when we get these sort of policies, so we can continue to grow air service."
Airlines, similarly, benefit from the certainty that if a route is particularly successful, the airline is allowed to add additional flight frequencies, he said.
Air Canada flies daily, non-stop YVR-SYD flights year-round on 300-seat Boeing 777 aircraft, Air Canada spokeswoman Angela Mah told BIV.
"During peak periods, double-daily flights have been operated," she said.
Air Canada also now flies daily, non-stop flights between YVR and Brisbane Airport (BNE) on a 298-seat Boeing 787 aircraft, Mah added.
Both those routes operated before the COVID-19 pandemic struck in 2020. The YVR-SYD flights have operated for decades, whereas the YVR-BNE ones launched in 2016.
Pre-pandemic, Air Canada also offered non-stop flights between YVR and Melbourne Airport (MEL) four times per week. The airline has yet to restart that route.
"With the delivery of new aircraft next year and beyond, we will evaluate Melbourne," Mah said.
Non-stop flights almost always cost consumers higher prices.
A quick search this afternoon for a non-stop round-trip between Vancouver and Sydney three months from now, for example, started at $1,889 for a flight on Qantas. One-stop fares knock more than $300 off that price, if done through Hong Kong, on Hong Kong Airlines.
Atkinson said other popular one-stop flights between YVR and SYD are via Auckland, New Zealand. Air Canada operates four flights weekly on that route using Boeing 787-9 planes while Air New Zealand flies five or six times per week on Boeing 787-9 planes, Atkinson said.
Fiji Airways flies two-to-three times per week on Airbus A-350-900 planes between YVR and Nadi International Airport (NAN), with those flights connecting to others into Australia, he added.
One advantage of flying Fiji Airways, the airline's regional general manager for the Americas, Stroebel Bekker, told BIV in 2023, is that passengers can book free stopovers for up to 72 hours in Fiji in each of their flights' directions, before they continue to their final destinations.
Data from Statistics Canada and Destination British Columbia hold that 218,903 Australian citizens entered Canada via B.C. entry points in 2024. That is up about 4.9 per cent from 2023, but down 11.3 per cent from 2019.
