Air Transport

Australia's Jetstar plans to double its Sydney-Darwin services by late October in response to strong demand.

The airline, Qantas Airways' low-cost subsidiary, offers fiveweekly services on the route. This will increase to a daily service from 18 September and another three weekly flights will be added from late October, bringing it to a total of 10 weekly services, says the carrier. It will operate Airbus A320 aircraft on the route.

Jetstar adds that the additional services will allow easier connections on its flights from Darwin to international destinations such as Singapore, Bali in Indonesia, and Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam.

"Our additional Sydney-Darwin services not only provide more domestic flight access into and from Darwin but importantly offer through Jetstar a new level of daily access from Sydney that will feed more traffic into our near Asian network via our Darwin flying hub," says Bruce Buchanan, Jetstar's CEO.

"With Jetstar's own Darwin passenger volumes having grown by 65% over the past year, our vision for a significant flying hub offering effective and seamless connections into Asia continues to come to fruition."

Existing Jetstar domestic operations to Darwin include 14 weekly flights from Melbourne, 13 weekly flights from Brisbane daily flights to Cairns (daily), and four-times weekly flights to Adelaide.