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This January my family and I are returning to the UK from a holiday in Australia. The ticket is booked from Canberra to LHR via Sydney and Doha with Qatar, flight 907 I believe.

Because we're finishing our holiday in Sydney (we start in Canberra), we were hoping to simply join the flight in Sydney, and avoid a 3 hour drive to Canberra, followed by an extra leg back to Sydney.

We contacted the travel agent (Expedia) to confirm if this was possible, and they said the Sydney stop is refuelling only, and we can't board there. Is that really the case? Would it be worth contacting the airline directly to confirm one way or the other?

Very few people get on the plane in Canberra. When I flew it they were load limited to fifty passengers for the Canberra-Sydney leg, of which forty-eight seats had been sold. My friend and I were the only ones in business class from Canberra. It was very enjoyable as there is a crew change in Sydney so the crew had a very easy day of 45 minutes flying and were happy to chat to us for the whole leg.

Most passengers board in Sydney. Qantas perform the ground handling (albeit in Qatar uniforms) in both Canberra and Sydney and they are very well acquainted with the rules.

You will be denied boarding in Sydney as your ticket is not valid for travel from this airport.

The Canberra tickets are deeply discounted because the Doha-Canberra route is not commercially viable and the demand is low. The only purpose of the tag-on from Sydney is to allow Qatar to operate another flight each day to Sydney, and to do that they have to serve a second tier destination within Australia. By attempting to miss the first leg, you are bypassing the pricing strategy (and weakening the numbers for Canberra) and Qatar will not be happy with that.

Answering the question of Why Canberra?

According to Qatar Airways announces Canberra to Doha flight to start next year

Qatar Airways currently only has direct rights for one Sydney flight a
day, but this move is seen as a backdoor method to double that.

So we checked with Qatar airlines directly.

1. Do people board that Canberra to Doha flight in Sydney? Yes.


2. Can we do that with our existing Canberra to Doha tickets? Not at this point without cancelling and re-booking, at considerable extra cost (it would nearly double the original cost of the flights!)

So the mystery of why they would route via Sydney airport is solved - they can and do sell tickets from Sydney to Doha, even though they are not allowed to sell domestic tickets from Canberra to Sydney.

We have been advised that at 96 hours before the flight it is worth phoning the airline again, and asking again. But not until then.

EDIT: The original question had been edited when I responded with this. The question I was answering was "Why would Qatar route a flight via Syndey, which is a slightly greater distance from Doha?". It has since been reverted.

Sydney Airport is the busiest airport in Australia, with over 44 million passenger movements, over a third of which were for international flights.

Canberra, on the other hand, sits in 8th with a hair over 3 million passenger movements last year. Only about 3% of these were for international flights.

There are about 300,000 people living in Canberra, compared to over 4 million in Sydney.

Based on these statistics, it is unlikely that a significant number of people are flying from Canberra to Doha, and far more likely that more people will be flying from Sydney to Doha. While it's a tiny bit closer (~1%) to go from Canberra, the cost of transporting the majority of passengers from Sydney to Canberra is extremely prohibitive. It is significantly cheaper to transport the minority of the passengers from Canberra to Sydney. It is unlikely that no-one will be boarding in Sydney, and may be incorrect information from the third party ticket seller.

Source: https://bitre.gov.au/publications/ongoing/airport_traffic_data.aspx