Great to see more EY A380s be deployed. However, we desperately need the A380 back in Sydney. The 1x daily flight with the old B777 just doesn't cut it, considering that before COVID we had 2x daily A380s.

Yeah it'll be interesting to see how Etihad behaves in the Aussie market now they have an interline agreement with Rex. Compared to before COVID, Etihad is significantly underserving the Aussie market. Pre-pandemic they had 2x daily A380 flights to SYD, daily A380 to MEL, and daily flights to BNE...

It's because the east coast cities of Australia have fairly large SA diasporas, with Sydney having the biggest by far. This, combined with QF63 being the only direct flight between Australia and South Africa, makes the route quite a niche, and as a result QF63 frequently sees very high demand.

"There's a very good reason why top international airlines such as Emirates and Qatar choose Melbourne as their first Australian destination, and we look forward to Turkish Airlines joining that list." This may be true, but then those airlines go on to fly to Sydney and end up adding more flights...

This seems incredibly foolish by the Brazilian government. It's almost like they are trying to disincentivise Aussie travelers. One thing's for certain: Brazil is off my travel bucket list for the foreseeable future until their government realises the stupidity of this policy.