Tag: tips & advice

Ever been on a delayed flight with a tight connection coming up and wondering if you’re going to make it? It’s stress you don’t need. Right now, when flight delays are all too common, it’s bringing more stress to more travelers.

In a sign of the times, Qantas has just raised its connection times for passengers transferring from a domestic to an international flight. Instead of 60 minutes, the airline will soon have a minimum connection time (MCT) of 90 minutes. The move comes as Qantas struggles with baggage handling delays caused by staff shortages. It’s taking longer to transfer checked luggage between aircraft, but another reason is the ongoing problems with flight delays. Qantas has just posted the worst on-time performance of any carrier in June 2022, with almost half its flights delayed or cancelled, and therefore more time is required between flights.

Minimum connection time

If your journey involves a connection you might be tempted to catch an earlier flight to allow for delays, but how much time should you allow? The answer is the MCT, the least amount of time required for you to get from your arriving flight to your next flight at the transfer point, and for your airline to do the same.

As a rule of thumb, the MCT is 60 minutes between domestic flights, 90 minutes between international flights, but it’s not the same for all airports and in all situations. For example if you arrive on an international flight at Sydney Airport and you’re transferring to a domestic flight, you need to get to the domestic terminal which is several kilometers away. As well as the journey time, you might have to wait up to 30 minutes for the T-Bus service which connects the terminals. That’s on top of the time it takes to collect your baggage and pass through immigration and customs, then check in for your next flight. Even 90 minutes might be cutting it fine. An MCT of 2½ hours is more realistic. By contrast, once you’ve collected your luggage and cleared immigration and customs, transferring between domestic and international flights at Melbourne Airport requires only a short walk. Any change of aircraft that involves domestic-to-international or vice versa requires an MCT of at least two hours. When things are likely to go wrong, such as the baggage handling problems currently experienced at many Australian airports, add another 30 minutes.

However things can get even more complicated. When you take a flight with a stop somewhere in between, you’re usually traveling on a single ticket with the same Passenger Name Record (PNR) for the entire journey. In most cases, it’s the responsibility of the airline you’re booking with or your travel agent to make sure your MCT is sufficient. If you don’t make that connecting flight through no fault of your own, it’s up to the airline to make things right and get you to your final destination as quickly as possible. That applies even if your journey involves different airlines, provided you’re traveling on a single ticket.

But that might not be the case. Say for example you’ve booked a cheap flight to Singapore then made another booking on a different airline to Paris. That’s a split ticket, one flight ticket for each sector. Assuming you have checked baggage you’re going to need to retrieve it in the baggage claim area at Singapore’s Changi Airport and check it in for your next flight. Even though you’re not going outside the terminal, that means passing through Singapore immigration, collecting your bag and going through customs before you can head for departures and check yourself and your baggage in for your Paris flight. Afterwards you’ll need to get through immigration and security before heading to your departure gate, and that’s going to take some time. Exactly how long depends on several variables – the queues at immigration, how long it takes for your checked luggage to arrive, the time it takes to check back in – but anything less than three hours could mean you miss your Paris flight.

If you’re traveling on a split ticket and you don’t make your connecting flight, you’re then regarded as a ‘no-show’ and subject to whatever penalties your airline applies. It could be the total loss of whatever you’ve paid, even if you’ve missed that connecting flight through no fault of your own, for example if your first flight is late in arriving at the transit stop. Worse still, missing one sector of a flight ticket means that all subsequent sectors on the same booking are automatically cancelled. If after Paris you were booked to fly to Athens on the same booking, that booking no longer exists.

See also: Eight Australian airport lounges you can enter without flying business class

See also: Everything you need to know about coping with the current travel chaos

Want to fly to Paris in mid-September for a three-week break to take in the wonders of late summer in Europe? From either Melbourne or Sydney, you might grab an economy class airfare with a budget carrier at around $2,200 but fly with a premier-league airline and you can expect to pay between $3,500-$5,000.

Airfares have gone through the roof. In July 2022 you’re paying for a long-haul economy class seat what would almost have got you into premium economy before the pandemic. A premium economy seat? Expect to pay close to what a business fare would have cost in 2019.

What’s happened?

Increased fuel prices are part of the reason we’re paying more to fly to Europe, but another big factor is the lack of low-price competition. In May 2022 a total of 51 international airlines operated scheduled passenger services to Australia. That’s 10 fewer than in May 2019. Big deal you might think, but most of those airlines no longer in our skies are China-based carriers, and that’s where the problem lies.

Before the pandemic struck, those Chinese carriers gave Aussie travelers plenty of reasons to cheer. If you wanted a bargain basement airfare to Europe, whether economy or business class, chances are you flew aboard one of those Chinese airlines. Even if you flew with another airline, the Chinese carriers exerted downward pressure on the prices other carriers could charge.

Before the pandemic Chinese airlines had become a huge presence in Australian aviation. Underpinned by the vast number of Chinese tourists flooding into Australia – over 1.44 million in the 12 months to November 2019, a four-fold increase over the previous decade – China’s air services to Australia rocketed. In 2009 there were three China-based carriers flying into Australia. A decade later there were nine. As well as multiple flights daily to Beijing, Guangzhou and Shanghai they offered non-stop flights to destinations as exotic as Kunming, Chengdu, Xiamen, Hangzhou and Qingdao.

The Chinese government even made it easy for Australians to have a stopover holiday with 72-hour visa-free entry to 18 Chinese cities, and 144-hour visa-free entry to a handful of others. Visa-free entry was simple. You showed up at the check-in desk and told the staff you’d be applying for visa-free entry. On board the aircraft you filled in the arrivals document, headed for the visa-free counter and presto – you were in.

Australia was keen to play ball, welcoming Chinese tourists with open arms. In December 2016 the government announced its intention to offer fast-track visa processing to Chinese tourists, confirming the introduction of 10-year, multiple entry visas for eligible Chinese visitors. The announcement was part of an open skies deal brokered between China and Australia, removing all capacity restrictions on their respective airlines.

In the first six months of 2019 the nine China-based airlines operating passenger services into Australia carried a total of 915,641 passengers. Assuming an average passenger load of 300 per aircraft, transporting those passengers would have required over 3000 flights. In the same six-month period in 2022 that number had shrunk to just three carriers and they transported a total of 22,251 passengers. That’s a quarter the number carried to and from Australia aboard just one Chinese carrier, China Southern Airlines, in the single month of January 2019.

In their absence, the remaining carriers have seized the opportunity and jacked up their prices on their European flights. Who could blame them? It’s been a dry couple of years, they’re carrying huge debt and they’re taking advantage of a surge in demand coupled with strangled supply.

Will the Chinese carriers return?

Not until the Chinese government allows its citizens to travel freely overseas, and right now they can’t do that except for essential reasons. Even when those restrictions are relaxed Australia might not be in the frame. The Chinese government has been quick to weaponize the vast number of its citizens who travel overseas, turning off the tap of travelers as it chooses, and right now Australia is in China’s sin bin. If we want to return to China’s warm embrace, we would need to button our lips, buckle to the demands of a more powerful and aggressive China and eat humble dumplings. So better get used to paying more for your airfare if you want to visit Europe. On the plus side, no international tourists from China means cheaper accommodation in Asia.

See also: Aussies flock to restriction-free Europe for northern summer

See also: Ten key tips for surviving the current travel chaos