Australian air travellers face travel chaos as COVID hits airline staff

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April 12, 2022
Credit AAP

Australian air travellers have endured massive delays across the domestic network as airline staff fall to COVID.

Qantas has reported that about 30 per cent of its staff have been absent causing check-in and loaded delays, while the security process has been impacted by passengers forgetting about protocols such as removing laptop computers.

READ: Australia’s sky-high domestic airfares set to plummet

Rescreening of bags has jumped from the normal 5 per cent to 30 per cent.

Over the last weekend, Qantas carried 350,000 passengers on 2800 flights as the school holidays started with the addition of the F1 Grand Prix in Melbourne.

The travel chaos is expected to continue through to the end of April.

For Easter, Qantas and Jetstar plan to operate at 110 per cent of their domestic capacity compared to 2019, flying around 500,000 passengers from April 14 to April 18.

Jetstar is planning to operate many flights with its much larger international Boeing 787s.

Travellers are also being urged to check in much earlier and at least two hours before and if possible check-in online and remove laptops and aerosols out of bags at security screening.

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