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Qantas Freight is preparing to ramp up operations for the busy holiday period, with freight volumes expected to increase by 5 per cent from last year.
The Flying Kangaroo expects to deliver more than 50,000 tonnes of international and domestic freight over the holiday season, with its domestic freighter fleet to fly around 550 additional hours across November and December, adding 3,000 tonnes of domestic capacity.
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One of the airline’s six A321 freighters, VH-XF4, has been decorated in a seasonal “Santa’s Freight” livery to mark the holidays, with the domestic freighter fleet alone expected to fly more than 11 million kilometres combined this year.
“We’ve increased flying hours, and we’ll have more support, extra capacity and our very own ‘Santa’s Freight’ aircraft to deliver more than 50 million kilos of freight this Christmas,” said Igor Kwiatkowski, executive manager at Qantas Freight.
“We’ll be spending the next few weeks flying gifts, cards, and perishables like mangoes and prawns across the country, and the world, and we’re delighted to play this important role for what is a really special time for families.”
Qantas Freight operates a fleet of five international and 20 domestic freighters, with its dedicated Australia Post fleet to temporarily increase from 12 to 16 for the holiday season. The airline expects to carry around 1 million kilograms of cargo per day on the busiest days leading up to Christmas, a 70 per cent increase on normal daily volumes.
The airline this year increased cargo capacity between Australia, Hong Kong and New Zealand with its converted Airbus freighters, and added Melbourne to one of its weekly trans-Tasman freighter routes in order to “open up capacity from southern states into New Zealand”.
“Demand for freight services is rising, particularly in Asia, and we’re looking at several options to extend the A330 freighter schedule to more places in Asia as we want to meet that need now and into the future,” Kwiatkowski said in September.
“These changes give freight customers in Australia, New Zealand and Asia more opportunity through greater frequency of services and the enhanced capacity of our Airbus fleet.”
Qantas received both of its converted A330-200 freighters, VH-EBE and VH-EBF, last year following their retrofit from passenger services; both aircraft previously flew passenger flights for Qantas and Jetstar.
