Qantas banks on coronavirus exemptions when domestic flights take off

Qantas says it is working with the Federal Government on an exemption of social-distancing rules aboard its aircraft when the national carrier resumes domestic air traffic.

Chief executive Alan Joyce said international repatriation flights, chartered by the Federal Government to bring Australian citizens home from India, for example, have not had vacant seats in between passengers and the “Government is very happy with that”.

“We just need to get those practices that are on those charter flights into the domestic operation, which is our intent,” Mr Joyce said.

Some US domestic carriers have adopted vacant seating between passengers, thus reducing their capacity and raising their running cost.

“Even if you take the middle seat as being empty, that’s 60 centimetres. The social distancing rules are supposed to be 1.5 metres. If you did that, you’d have very few people on an aircraft and the airfares would have to be very high,” Mr Joyce said.

Mr Joyce cited a lack of evidence over mid-air person-to-person transmission and linked this to the HEPA (high-efficiency particulate air) filtration used onboard, and said “no conclusions have been reached” with the Federal Government.

7.30 asked the Government and the Australian Health Protection Principal Committee whether passengers flying domestically or internationally will be required to socially distance when restrictions are lifted, but did not receive a response by publication.

“There’s been no known transmission of COVID-19 passenger to passenger or passenger to crew, and there’s huge tracking been done on that in this country,” Mr Joyce said.

“We have the protections of how we clean aircraft, and if we put other protections in place, we think we can make a case and to make that absolutely