Sydney and Brisbane-based fans are coughing up as much as $1800 for a return trip to Melbourne this weekend for the first all-interstate final since 2006.
Sydney Swans and Brisbane Lions fans are facing Melbourne airfares at more than twice the normal rates, forcing some to contemplate driving as cheaper places on trains fill up ahead of the first all-interstate final since 2006.
On Saturday, Qantas announced it had added five flights between Brisbane and Melbourne after the Lions knocked out Geelong, in addition to 10 Sydney flights after the Swans beat Port Adelaide the day before. On Monday, it said one new flight sold out within 40 minutes of going on sale on Saturday, and all direct Melbourne to Brisbane flights for the day after the grand final had sold out within 24 hours of the Lions game.
Justin Brownjohn, operations manager at the RMIT Aviation Academy and a former network controller for major airlines, said adding extra flights for a special event is a complex operation, particularly as the teams involved are not known until the week before.“It’s not as simple as putting another flight on sale. Airlines need to find the aircraft, the crew, and sometimes the slots,” he said.
”My wife had gone to bed. I was looking at flights. I thought, oh yeah, this is doable. I should really check with her before taking off with the child for a week,” he said.“I checked flights again an hour later, and a whole bunch of the options had disappeared or were a bunch more expensive. So I thought, ask for forgiveness, booked the flights, and told her about it in the morning.”
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