Looking at the flight statistics for Air India's planes that have been flying into Australia - no shortage of empty seats per month - numbers in the low thousands per month. In August they flew 198 passengers into Australia on 6 flights so just 33 passengers per plane and took 1,313 out. Total seats available across those 6 flights were 1,536, down from 8 flights in July with 2,048 seats.
The per flight restrictions saw them limited to 33 passengers out of 256 per flight capacity. If they'd been Q - they would have stopped flying completely.
Yet the Fed Govt rewards Q by fully paying all operating costs for the Q flights & allowing Q to charge passengers fares on top - nice largesse from Scomo. I'm sure Air India would have been willing to fly into Darwin with 175 passengers per plane with no Govt largesse.