Overseas holidays and business trips are about to get more expensive after Qantas Airways raised ticket prices and increased fuel surcharges for the second time in eight weeks.
Qantas on Friday said fuel surcharges on its international flights would rise between $10 and $30 from April 12.
The fuel surcharge for a return trip to London or Frankfurt has been raise to $760, from $700 previously.
Domestic fares on Qantas and QantasLink were not spared either, with ticket prices rising by about five per cent.
A Qantas fare for a one-way flight between Melbourne and Sydney - the world’s fourth busiest air route - will start at $129 from April 5, up $7 from $122 currently.
Qantas said that jet fuel was the carrier’s largest operational cost and prices were at their highest since 2007/08.
‘‘While fuel surcharges, price increases and hedging are being used to mitigate the impact of fuel prices, they will not fully recover the cost impact,’’ Qantas said in a statement.
Qantas officials were unavailable for comment.
The airline, which last raised fuel prices in February, said underlying fuel costs for the group were expected to rise by $300 million in the second half of 2011/12 to $2.25 billion.
Fuel surcharges would also be raised for frequent flyer award bookings.
Fares and other service charges on its low-cost offshoot Jetstar would rise for both its Singapore and Australian markets.
The airline group’s latest operating statistics showed Qantas had more passengers travelling on its flights in the financial year to February 2012.
However, the rise in passenger numbers did not match the extra seats it added across the group that includes Qantas mainline, QantasLink and Jetstar.
As a result, the revenue seat factor - an industry measure of how full planes are - across the group fell 0.59 percentage points to 80.55 per cent.
‘‘Capacity growth in the domestic market is forecast to increase in the remaining months of 2011/12, largely driven by substantial domestic capacity growth by competitors,’’ Qantas said.
The airline said yield - an industry measure of average airfares per passenger - was expected to rise between 1.5 per cent and 2.5 per cent in the second half of 2011/12, compared with the prior corresponding half.
AAP