Andrew Barr says international flights out of Canberra Airport are years away

Singapore Airlines closed their Canberra office in 2020 as border closures and COVID-19 plagued the industry. Canberra Airport has previously offered flights to Singapore, Wellington and Doha.

While international travel opened back up for tourists into Australia on Monday, overseas travellers will have to wait years for a direct flight in or out of the capital.

Chief Minister Andrew Barr expected flights from Canberra Airport to New Zealand to commence several years from now and flights to Singapore several years after that.

"Singapore Airlines have to re-establish a global aviation network ... they were just decimated. Two years, that was [all it took] for one of the biggest global networks to scale right back to almost nothing," he said.

In mind-2021 the return of overseas flights was flagged for summer, in a proposition to airlines put forward by the ACT government.

A Singapore Airlines spokesperson said the company did not have immediate plans to return to Canberra, but they would continue to monitor capacity.

Singapore Airlines' South West Pacific Regional vice-president Philip Goh previously told The Canberra Times the decision had been "extremely difficult" but was necessary with demand expected to remain stunted for a long period of time.

"We will carefully review our plans going forward and make adjustments to our network to meet the changing demand patterns," he said.

With travel to China and New Zealand currently closed to tourists and a US advisory advising Americans not to visit Australia, airlines across the country are struggling.

However, Canberra Airport CEO Stephen Byron said he was "hopeful to see Singapore Airlines' re-entry into Canberra in the next 12 months".

"We are also continuing our discussions with airlines about New Zealand and South Pacific services - this was a focus of ours pre-COVID," he said.

The COVID-19 pandemic continues to decimate the airline industry with Qantas announcing a $1.28 billion underlying loss on Thursday for the first half of the 2022 financial year.

In relatively good news for the territory, international travellers make up only eight per cent of the tourism and travel market in the ACT.

Mr Barr said modeling for market recovery Australia-wide predicted numbers wouldn't hit pre-pandemic levels until the middle of this decade with a slow return of travellers from China.

One of the major challenges for the Australian aviation industry is the sheer distance and cost of travel from other countries.

Canberra Airport is currently running at 45 per cent capacity with modest increases on a weekly basis. New domestic services have been added to Darwin, Hobart, Byron Bay and flights have recommenced to Brisbane.

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The Chief Minister said airlines had switched focus to smaller planes and more frequent flights since the pandemic began.

"The focus now will be on increasing the frequency within the existing domestic network," Mr Barr said.

"That's most likely to mean more frequent flights in smaller aircraft and that's opened up opportunities for some of the regional airlines to partner with some of the bigger players.

"We actually have more airlines flying to more destinations domestically, but they're using smaller aircraft. And that is a reflection of the volume of travel being down. But I think there's an expectation over the course of this year that will slowly build, driven by a mixture of business travel and [increased] community confidence around domestic tourism."

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