Qantas Airways of Australia is expanding its neighbour-free seating trial to 19 international routes following a successful trial on domestic services earlier this year.
The trial includes destinations such as Singapore, Auckland, Christchurch, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Dallas, and Honolulu.
The service is available for eligible passengers in economy class, with Premium Economy or Business Class passengers not included. Neighbour-Free seating prices start from A$45 on trans-Tasman flights, A$100 between Australia and Singapore, and A$225 between Australia and the United States.
Passengers will be emailed 48 hours before departure if their flight has spare seats and they can purchase a Neighbour-Free seat. The service is limited to Qantas marketed and operated flights, excluding codeshare services, and certain passengers such as those with ancillaries, upgrades, unaccompanied minors, or part of a group booking are not eligible.
The expansion of the programme to international flights has been driven by positive customer feedback and the popularity of the service on longer domestic flights. Qantas plans to test processes and expand the program further in the coming months.
Catriona Larritt, chief customer and digital officer at Qantas said “we’ve had a really positive reaction from customers who’ve opted to travel Neighbour Free on our domestic network and customers have told us they want the option on our international flights too. International bookings can be a little more complex, which is why we’re starting with select routes and bookings without additional products to test our processes, before expanding the program in the coming months. The data shows its most popular with customers on our longer flights between the east and west coasts, so rolling it out to our international flights makes a lot of sense.”
