Jetstar resumed flights between Australia and Japan on Wednesday. The flight to Tokyo Narita marked Jetstar’s first commercial passenger service between the two countries since March 2020. From Wednesday, Jetstar is back to operating five return flights a week between Cairns (CNS) and Tokyo Narita (NRT), while three times a week return flights between Cairns and Osaka Kansai (KIX) will resume on July 26.
Good news for Cairns
Jetstar’s restart on the two routes is good news for tourist-dependent Cairns, which like similar cities elsewhere, did it tough when flights and traveler numbers dried up at the onset of COVID-19. Before the pandemic, around 110,000 cashed-up Japanese annually visited the Far North Queensland city that serves as a popular Great Barrier Reef jumping-off point
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“During the pandemic, Cairns Airport and our industry partners maintained strong relationships with both airlines and international destinations, and we are now seeing the flow-on benefits from those efforts,” says Cairns Airport Chief Operating Officer Garry Porter. “The Japanese market is incredibly important to our region, and the resumption of these Jetstar services is symbolic of how far our aviation and tourism industries have progressed since our COVID recovery phase began.”
Jetstar’s Dreamliners once again flying between Australia & Japan
Every Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, Jetstar flight JQ25 departs Cairns at 11:10 am for the seven and a-half-hour flight up to Tokyo Narita, landing at 17:40. The plane spends a few hours on the ground in Narita before turning around to operate JQ26 back to Cairns. The plane’s doors close at 20:15, and it flies through the night to land at the slightly unholy hour of 04:35. On the plus side, that arrival time allows for some handy connections on the day’s first flights out of Cairns to southern Australian cities.
If Osaka beckons, the CNS-KIX flights will operate every Wednesday, Friday, and Sunday from July 26. Jetstar flight JQ15 departs Cairns at 12:25. Flying time to Kansai is also seven and a half hours, with the jet touching down at 18:55. Like at Narita, the plane turns around fairly quickly to operate the return service back to Cairns that evening. JQ16 will leave KIX at 21:05 every Wednesday, Friday, and Sunday, zipping south to land in Cairns at 05:15 the next day.
On both services, Jetstar is deploying its 335-seat Boeing 787-8 Dreamliners. They are a far more comfortable option for these slightly longer flights than Jetstar’s workhorse Airbus A320 jets. The Dreamliners feature Jetstar’s business class cabin, similar to a premium economy cabin on a full-service airline but also an infinity more comfortable option for a seven-and-a-half-hour flight than parking yourself in economy class.
“Australia has always been a popular destination for Japanese travelers, and we’re excited to be able to reconnect the two countries, providing a significant tourism boost to the local Cairns community and Queensland more broadly,” says Jetstar CEO Gareth Evans. “Jetstar is the first Australian carrier to relaunch flights between Australia and Japan, and we’re already seeing a lot of pent-up demand from Japanese travellers eager to visit Australia.”
While Japanese travelers are free to come and go from Australia, the Japanese Government maintains some restrictions on inbound foreign travelers, including Australians. There is widespread expectation that those restrictions will ease over the next couple of months.