QANTAS, JETSTAR ADD STAFF TO EASE HOLIDAY CHAOS

Qantas and Jetstar are rostering on management staff to help ease the airport congestion pain as hundreds of thousands prepare to take off on holidays. Tonight marks the start of school holidays in WA, NSW and the ACT with 350,000 expected to fly with the Qantas Group this weekend. The Qantas Group has recruited more than 1000 operational staff, including cabin crew, airport customer service, pilots and engineers to ease the congestion and long queues, while hundreds of extra contact centre staff have helped reduce call wait times to below pre-COVID levels. The airline group has put more staff on standby to minimise the impact of sick leave or COVID-isolation requirements with Qantas assigned 20 per cent more staff on standby rosters. The supporting ground handler suppliers have added 15 per cent more employees onto standby positions. The Qantas Group also said that it has made operational changes to improve on-time performance, such as using two boarding doors for more efficiency and has spread flight departure times to ease congestion. It claims that more staff have been deployed to assist at check-in and manage queues and has put several hundred corporate head office staff on standby to help in baggage areas and check-in at Sydney and Melbourne airports. Qantas has also rolled out new check-in and baggage kiosks at Sydney, Cairns and Townsville. The airline group's advice to travellers is to check-in online and arrive at the domestic airport around two hours ahead of their scheduled departure time. For international travellers, the advice is three hours before departure and have all your documents ready particularly your international - not domestic - COVID certificate ready.