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QantasLink boosts frequencies on Sydney-Brisbane West Wellcamp

written by australianaviation.com.au | May 6, 2015

QantasLink Q400 named Darling Downs at Wellcamp Airport. (Wellcamp)
QantasLink’s first flight lands at Wellcamp Airport. (Wellcamp)

QantasLink is adding an extra four flights a week between Sydney and Brisbane West Wellcamp Airport and changing flight times of certain services in response customer feedback.

The regional arm of Qantas started flying to the privately-built Wellcamp Airport in November 2014 with Bombardier Q400s with an initial 11 return services a week.

From June 26, QantasLink is boosting its schedule with an extra flight on Friday evening, one more service on Saturday and two extra flights on Sunday, which represent an additional 296 seats a week.

“Demand has been strong on the Wellcamp-Sydney route, and a lot of our customers have been telling us they want additional flights over the weekends,” QantasLink chief executive John Gissing said in a statement on Wednesday.

“We’ve listened to our customers and have been able to work the schedule to put on these additional flights. We’re very happy with the way the route is performing.”

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QantasLink is also moving its Friday afternoon departure from Sydney an hour earlier to 1655, while the Saturday morning flight from Wellcamp has been pushed back to 0835, from 0730 previously.

The airport’s general manager Phil Gregory said there was great support from the local community since the first flight landed on November 17 2014 and the extra flights would support tourism.

“We expect the new services will continue to drive tourism numbers but also help further facilitate business travel to and from the region,” Gregory said in a statement.

Gregory said the airport was pushing QantasLink to open up direct flights to Melbourne, with negotiations continuing.

Wellcamp Airport, Australia’s first privately-funded airport built by family-run local company Wagners, is served by QantasLink, Regional Express and fly-in/fly-out operator Avmin.

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Comments (6)

  • Chuck

    says:

    New routes. Try Melbourne, Newcastle, Townsville. The latter cities would connect Rex’s or Qantaslink’s Southern and Northern networks – which would make Toowoomba Wellcamp an ideal (and likely less expensive) maintenance and crew base.

  • Luke rheinberger

    says:

    Chuck,you maybe able to open a crew base at well camp,but not a maintenance base,airlines struggle to get engineers to Canberra which is a lot larger place than well camp

  • derrick

    says:

    If Qantaslink want to make more money then they should do Wellcamp to Miles return, Wellcamp to Roma return to cope with the oil and gas industry.

  • Russell M

    says:

    Had the chance a few weeks ago to fly MEL / SYD then Toowoomba direct. This is a wonderful service, and certainly beats the drive from Brisbane airport to Toowoomba, especially in peak hour traffic.

    I’ve had some long flights in a Dash 8 before (Melbourne to Newcastle direct), but the Sydney / Toowoomba sector is just fine. 15 years ago I was travelling Melbourne / Toowoomba quite regularly, but having to climb into a piston Piper Navajo for the Brisbane / Toowoomba service, which wasn’t exactly the best flight.. Full marks to the private operation that has been set up – there were plenty of nay-sayers at the start, but the service is great. Interestingly, our Wednesday evening service was at least 85% full with 70(?) seats on the -400.

    Melbourne / Toowoomba direct might need an extra Scotch to get through the flight, but it would be a really fantastic sector as well, even if only 3 – 4 times a week. To save time faffing around in Sydney would make the flight worthwhile.

  • Chuck

    says:

    @Luke – point well made but there is already a large amount of aviation maintenance work, both civil and military in SEQ. Further to that Toowoomba’s property values and lifestyle costs are significantly below Canberra, and it has easy access to Brisbane and the coast. I don’t think it is beyond possibility that one of the airlines could see the wide and as yet under-utilised space at Wellcamp as attractive and a genuine lower cost option, whilst delivering scheduling advantages by connecting geographically separated networks. Rex currently has isolated outposts in Northern Australia that could easily be connected through an unserviced route like Newcastle to Wellcamp, which would also allow them to avoid going head to head with QF and VA.

  • Corey

    says:

    I’d like Qantas to fly out of the Sunshine Coast to Cairns, Townsville, Mackay, Rockhampton, Gladstone, Sydney, Canberra, Melbourn along along with possible flights to Adelaide. I do know there is demand for North of the Sunshine Coast and also Qantas could fly to NZ, Fiji and Vanuatu. If Qantas/Jetstar got behind the new proposed E/W runway and offered these new flights if it was built along with flight to Hawaii, Japan etc they could make lots of revenue from the flights out of the Sunshine Coast and they could offer very early and late flights into and out of the Sunshine Coast for business workers who either have early meetings in another city or have very late meetings and wish to travel home on the same day along with families looking for a quick weekend getaway after work. The Sunshine Coast airport could offer them great subsidies like it currently gives Air New Zealand.

    If anyone with a greater knowledge of aviation and or a commercial pilot if you could provide some feed back that would be very much appreciated thank you.

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