More flights at Canberra Airport as every state opens to ACT

Qantas is poised to add flights to the Sunshine Coast, Cairns and Hobart to its regular routes in the coming weeks and travel to Melbourne is expected to be popular when the Victoria border reopens on November 23.

Australia recorded another day of no community transmissions and the ACT government is set to announce changes to its restrictions when Chief Minister Andrew Barr meets with chief health officer Kerryn Coleman today.

The airport has been one of the hardest-hit businesses in Canberra, with operation dropping to just two per cent when states began shutting their borders to travellers.

Business has increased to about 17 per cent of capacity and head of aviation Michael Thomson is hopeful that will rise again in the lead up to the holiday period.

The terminal can cope with 22,000 passengers a day at capacity so Christmas could see 6000 to 9000 passengers a day go through.

"When it all started we had projections on how far we'd drop and quickly the recovery would come," he said. "We got them all completely wrong. I don't think anyone expected the depth and the length of the trough."

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Link Airways started flights to Hobart on Thursday and Qantas will follow with its three new offerings. The airline will flying from Canberra to the Sunshine Coast from November 19, to Cairns from November 21 and Hobart from December 4.

Qantas has opened a three-day ticket sale, with one-way options to Hobart, Cairns and the Sunshine Coast all available for less than $200.

"With international borders still closed, Australians are more inspired than ever to explore places in their own backyard," said Qantas domestic and international boss Andrew David. "We've taken a fresh look at our network, creating new direct services, which were previously only available by connecting via another city, saving customers up to two hours travel time.

"These flights are great news for Canberra travellers who will now have more direct flights to Cairns, Noosa and Hobart. It will also mean we can get more of our people back to work."

Link Airways, Pelican and Alliance have recently added regular services to Hobart, Port Macquarie, Cairns, the Sunshine Coast and Gold Coast on either side of Brisbane, and to Ballina as a way to Byron Bay and the northern coast of New South Wales.

Qantas has resumed flights from Canberra to Adelaide on four days a week. Virgin Australia has also resumed flights to the South Australian capital.

But the big expansion in destinations doesn't make good the loss of international traffic, either directly to Canberra with Qatar and Singapore airlines, or of passengers transiting from abroad to Canberra through Sydney and Melbourne.

More domestic destinations are on offer but with smaller planes. The new Qantas flights will be on 110-seater Boeing 717s.

More destinations are expected to follow if and when borders open as Australia continues on its path to being COVID-free.

Queensland is now open to regional NSW and the ACT, effectively "doubling our catchment within a two-hour drive."

"In the last couple of weeks we've seen more flights start to Queensland, but we've also seen the airlines increasing the size of the aircraft they are flying, so there's more seats," Mr Thomson said.

"We'd imagine once things open up, and [Melbourne] are doing a great job of keeping things under control, then that movement will start picking up again pretty rapidly," Mr Thomson said.

"The difference between Melbourne and Sydney, which was our second busiest route, is you can't drive down to Melbourne for a day."

The airport has been pushing for open borders for months, arguing travel can be done COVID safely.

With travel back on the cards, attention has turned to Australia's business community to move away from Zoom meetings and get on a plane.

"We won't see the growth in business travel that we're all hoping for until people are in the office and there's a point in flying to have a face-to-face meeting," Mr Thomson said.

"We're hoping that side of things continues to grow and there's a greater desire for people to meet face-to-face."