Queenslanders keen to resume travel to Japan after several years of strict border closures and Covid restrictions will be pleased to see the Flying Roo resuming flights between Brisbane and Tokyo this week on Thursday December 1. The rebounded service joins a recent resurgence of services by the Qantas Group to the Japanese market and joins Sydney’s recently relaunched and now daily service between Sydney and Tokyo whilst it comes ahead of Qantas’s much hyped return of Melbourne to Tokyo services which will bein in March next year. Qantas’s budget subsidiary Jetstar have also been enjoying considerable success on their Japan routes after the full reopening of Japan’s border’s back in October and connect both the Gold Coast and Cairns with Tokyo with an additional twice weekly service from Cairns to Osaka .
In what many will see as great news for Tokyo bound travelers all three services are scheduled to use Tokyo’s Haneda Airport which is a lot more closer to central Tokyo than Narita Airport which is over 80km or an hour a way to central Tokyo by train.
The thrice weekly service from Brisbane to Tokyo will be serviced by the Flying Roo’s Airbus A330 aircraft which comes configured with 28 lie flat business class seats in a 1-2-1 configuration in addition to 269 economy class seats. The outbound flight (QF61l) is timetabled to depart Brisbane every Monday, Thursday and Saturday at 11.50am ahead of reaching Tokyo Haneda at 8pm that evening. The inbound service (QF62) jets out of Tokyo Bay at 9.30pm before arriving in Brisbane at 7.35am the following morning with a flight time of around 9 hours.
The return of Qantas to the Queensland to Japan market is believed to be helped by the Queensland State Government’s $200 million Attracting Aviation Investment Fund created to boost Queensland’s tourism sector by stimulating international travel to the state and attracting new flight routes.
