Qantas Suspends Alice Springs-Melbourne Flights, Restricts Darwin-Singapore Service

Qantas will suspend direct flights between Alice Springs and Melbourne indefinitely and restrict its Darwin-Singapore service to "peak periods only", pausing the route between late October and June 2027, citing "falling demand and rising costs".

In a statement announcing the changes, the airline's domestic chief executive Markus Svensson said Alice Springs customers would still be able to fly to Melbourne via stopovers in Sydney and Adelaide.

"Unfortunately we’ve had to make the difficult decision to indefinitely suspend our Alice Springs-Melbourne service and we apologise to customers," he said.

“The same pressures have led us to reduce Darwin-Singapore flying to peak periods and we don’t take either decision lightly.”

Mr Svensson said Qantas had "put one of our newest and most efficient aircraft" on the Alice Springs-Melbourne route six months ago but the move, along with sale prices as low as $199 one way, had failed to stimulate demand.

"Unfortunately it has underperformed," he said.

Instead, the airline will add a Saturday service between Alice Springs and Sydney, increasing the number of flights between the two locations from six days a week to seven.

A billion-dollar-a-year business

Darwin-based aviation analyst Bruce Dale said it was "very sad" to see the Alice Springs-Melbourne route cancelled after "many decades".

"At the same time, the challenges of economic flying within the Territory effects all airlines, not just Qantas, so on that hand I can understand why Qantas would have made this difficult decision," he said.

"They had reduced to a very modern fuel-efficient aircraft, the A220, which is smaller and better suited to the market — that normally helps — but unfortunately it might not have been enough to save the route."

Mr Dale said while there might be room for governments to step in when routes became uneconomical for airlines, "we also have to be realistic about the cost of flying airline services to the Territory".

"By my estimate, the cost of every single flight to and from the Territory, and the intra-territory services, cost the airlines about $1 billion a year — it's big business," he said.

"So if you have flights going half full, it’s actually costing the airlines tens of thousands, potentially even a million dollars, over the course of a year.

"So that balance between what is a reasonable expectation for a private enterprise to carry versus is there government support, and how much government support could actually make a difference, if we’re talking about a billion-dollar-a-year business."

Mr Dale said he was "personally gutted" by Qantas' decision to restrict flights between Darwin and Singapore to the peak tourist season but other airlines were still flying the route year-round.

"I've got family in the UK I need to care for, so I'm a semi-regular traveller on that flight, but again I understand the reasons why," he said.

Tourism Central Australia chief executive Danial Rochford said the news was devastating for an industry already struggling due to cost-of-living pressures and the war in Iran.

"This service is such a critical component of not only the tourism industry, to be able to get tourists in and out of the region, but also for the livability of the town — so on both circumstances, this is devastating news," he said.

"We of course can get routed through Sydney and Adelaide, but the loss of that direct service is certainly devastating.

"It's been a very difficult year for tourism already, but we were seeing some green buds of optimism until today."