Qantas schedule changes

Qantas has announced an interim schedule effective from November, aimed at redirecting capacity from some of its Indonesia services to holiday destinations where demand was increasing.

Qantas Executive General Manager Sales and Marketing John Borghetti said that the airline had played a major role in moving capacity to Bali so that people wanting to return home could do so quickly and easily.

"With the needs of those travellers met, and demand for travel between Australia and Bali slowing over the coming months, we have reassessed our schedule to ensure we are offering enough capacity to other international and domestic holiday destinations for the busy Christmas holiday season," he said.

Mr Borghetti said Qantas would:

* Continue to operate four Sydney-Jakarta and two Perth-Jakarta return flights per week;

* Offer two Boeing 767 Sydney-Denpasar return services a week from November - down from four return services a week;

* Maintain operations between the Northern Territory and Denpasar by operating one of these Sydney 767 flights via Darwin;

* Operate one weekly return Boeing 737 Perth-Denpasar service flight each week from December, increasing to two services a week in January; and

* Cancel the weekly Melbourne-Denpasar service.

Mr Borghetti said Qantas would continue to assess demand and make adjustments to the schedule where required. 

"We have the flexibility to introduce additional capacity quickly if circumstances require it, as we have done over the past week," Mr Borghetti said. 

Mr Borghetti said many customers who had booked holidays to Bali were changing to destinations such as Fiji and Queensland, and that Qantas would direct additional capacity to these routes to cater for the increased demand in the December-January school holiday period.

"We are planning to add capacity to our Cairns, Gold Coast, Hamilton Island, Rockhampton, Maroochydore and Perth routes, as well as Nadi and Singapore," he said.