Qantas eyes India route Sydney-Delhi from December 6, three times a week

Qantas is set to fly the India route Sydney – Delhi nonstop from December 6, thrice weekly using its Airbus A330. It will also include a stop in Darwin in the Sydney-to-Delhi leg. The Australian carrier will restart its commercial service to India after more than a decade.

Qantas plans to operate the route through March 2022 and continue it if there is sufficient demand. The launch of this new route follows Australia’s decision to reopen its international borders from November 1, 2021 – removing quarantine requirements for fully vaccinated arrivals into Sydney

In January 2021, Alan Joyce the Qantas Group CEO told Reuters Next online forum that India is always a hard market to service, because Indian traffic is spread through so many different cities in India. “But we are always keeping an eye on it,” Joyce said. “We think at some stage, India with the traffic levels, the economic activity and the links with Australia will get to a sustainable service, and we think when it reaches that points we’ll add it on.” He said that as part of Qantas flight path out of COVID-19, the airline will be looking for new international opportunities, and India’s just a matter of time.

According to an official statement, Qantas also has pushed up the restart of its service to Singapore by four weeks to November 23 starting with three round trip flights per week and increasing to daily on December 18. Several routes from Sydney for next year have been pushed up as well, Qantas announced. Service to Johannesburg has been pushed up three months to a January 5 start, service to Bangkok has been brought forward by two months for a January 14 start and service to Phuket, Thailand pushed up two months for a January 12 start. It added that flights to Honolulu, Vancouver, Tokyo and New Zealand remain on schedule for a mid-December start.

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Furthermore, the Australian airline would push up its service from Sydney to both Los Angeles and London up two weeks for a November 1 start. The quicker-than-planned return stems from the Australian state of New South Wales, of which Sydney is the capital, announcing that it will begin allowing fully vaccinated international travellers to arrive without quarantine starting November 1, although initially limited to Australian citizens and residents.