Ian Sheppard/LONDON
Qantas has started operating Boeing 747-400 charter flights in Europe by leasing its aircraft to other carriers during layover at London Heathrow Airport.
Qantas pilots and cabin crew will operate five trips to Barcelona and four to Istanbul, flying P&O cruise passengers to and from the Mediterranean, during the downtime when the aircraft would normally be waiting at Heathrow for up to 14h to return to Australia.
Regulatory approval for the deal has been gained from the UK, Spanish and Turkish aviation authorities.
The Australian carrier has wet leased the 747s to THY Turkish Airlines for the Istanbul service, while the approval of the UK and Spain services means that it can use its own flight number on the service between the two European Union nations.
Qantas, which believes the layover period is "-a unique opportunity to handle charters", has been seeking for some time to operate routes out of the UK during the downtime between UK-Australia flights. The deal does not require the positioning of crews and the only additional manpower is an onboard engineer.
Last year Qantas and British Airways, which has a 25% holding in the Australian carrier, failed to get UK approval to operate scheduled flights using BA pilots under the UK carrier's operating licence.
The British Airline Pilots Association says that, despite the failure to gain approval for the scheduled flights last year, British Airways had reiterated earlier in June its intention to work more closely with Qantas.
BA's original application, filed with the UK's Civil Aviation Authority on 29 July last year, made it clear that it wanted free interchange of aircraft and crews.
Source: Flight International
