Skyrocketing jet fuel costs, triggered by the effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz seven weeks ago, have forced Australian budget carrier Jetstar and its parent company Qantas to slash thousands of flights across Australia and New Zealand through the end of June, with New Zealand domestic routes bearing the brunt of the cuts. New data compiled by aviation industry publication AeroRoutes details the scale of the capacity cuts between May 18 and June 30, revealing stark disparities in how the reductions impact different regions. Jetstar is trimming just 2.7% of its domestic Australian flight capacity over the period, bringing total scheduled services to 10,237, while cutting 12% of its domestic New Zealand operations, dropping total flights to just 1,564 – a relative cut more than four times larger than the cuts to Australian domestic routes. The deep cuts to New Zealand domestic capacity mean local travelers will face far greater disruption than their Australian counterparts. For trans-Tasman routes connecting Australia and New Zealand, the largest reductions are concentrated on services running to and from Auckland and Christchurch, both operating out of Australia’s Gold Coast. On Australian domestic routes, two planned services have been pushed back or cancelled entirely: the scheduled June 17 resumption of Gold Coast to Darwin flights has been delayed until October, and all Sydney to Busselton (Western Australia) services are scrapped between June 1 and September 21. Across the entire seven-week cut period in Australia, most Jetstar routes see fewer than five cancelled trips per route, but domestic New Zealand sees far larger cuts to key intercity routes: 55 Auckland to Christchurch flights are axed, dropping total scheduled services to 310, and 53 Auckland to Wellington trips are removed from the schedule, leaving 142 remaining flights. Qantas, Jetstar’s parent company, has also implemented its own capacity cuts, trimming 3.6% of its total scheduled flights in the same May 18 to June 30 window. Qantas’s cuts fall most heavily on busy domestic trunk routes: 43 Brisbane to Melbourne flights, 31 Melbourne to Brisbane flights, 23 Melbourne to Adelaide flights, 27 Perth to Sydney flights, 50 Sydney to Brisbane flights, and 76 Sydney to Melbourne flights have all been cancelled. The root cause of the capacity pullback is a historic surge in jet fuel prices, that has seen costs for buyers in Asia and Oceania jump as much as 150% since the Strait of Hormuz, a critical global energy chokepoint, was closed seven weeks ago. Last week, Qantas issued a formal update to the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) warning that its total fuel bill for the second half of the 2024 financial year would be between $600 million and $800 million higher than initial projections. The steep rise in fuel costs comes even as the airline group’s core profitability metric, revenue per passenger kilometre, continues to climb as carriers push through higher ticket prices to offset growing costs. Neither Jetstar nor Qantas has issued a public statement responding to questions about the new capacity cut details from AeroRoutes. The widespread cuts highlight how global energy market disruptions are directly impacting regional aviation capacity across Oceania, putting additional pressure on travelers already facing rising airfares.
Jetstar axes number of New Zealand flights by 12 per cent as soaring fuel costs continue to bite
