Airline News
Qantas adds Asia frequencies and Virgin Atlantic says Virgin Australia is a keeper
September 11th 2015
Qantas Airways will add four frequencies a week to its existing daily Sydney-Hong Kong service and introduce the reconfigured A330s, featuring its well-received new business class product, to the route. The Australian carrier will also add a seasonal flight on its Sydney-Manila route, which will increase its schedule to five services a week to the Philippines capital from early December to late March. Read More » Qantas and several other Asia-Pacific carriers are launching seasonal routes to better match their capacity and improve fleet utilisation.
Qantas Group chief, Alan Joyce, told reporters at a Royal Aeronautical Society Australian Division lunch in Sydney last week that the carrier had hoped to add a second daily service to Hong Kong, but had to accept the offer of four more flights a week because of slot constraints.
It was the slot situation, rather than the bilateral air services agreement between Hong Kong and Australia, that was hindering Qantas’ efforts to grow its operations in the territory, he said. “You might have open access or more access in the bilateral, but if you don’t have the slots it is academic,” Joyce said. “Unfortunately, until the third runway is built in Hong Kong there is limited growth opportunities for Australian carriers compared with Hong Kong-based carriers. That needs to be recognised in any bilateral discussions.”
In Sydney last week, Sir Richard Branson, founder of the Virgin Group, told Fairfax Media he was “not interested” in selling any part of its 10% holding in Qantas’ arch rival, Virgin Australia, after the global group sold two tranches in 2013 to Etihad Airways and Singapore Airlines. “We are very much holders,” he said, and added he was pleased with VA’s successful strategy of moving upmarket to take on Qantas. "If Virgin Australia didn't exist, Qantas would be as bad as it was five years ago," Branson said. "But with Virgin Australia coming in and innovating, Qantas has had to react. The Australian public have definitely benefited all around from that," he said.
"When Qantas tried to [crush] Virgin Australia, they inflicted so much damage on themselves and to themselves that they finally backed off," he said. "They even had to go begging to their government, having lost hundreds of millions of dollars trying to drive us out of business. The main thing was to make sure we kept the quality up," Branson said. He was concerned that the lower commodity prices could lead to a drop in demand for Australian travellers, but he believed the lower Australian dollar should benefit inbound business from markets like the United States. "There will be a lot more people coming to Australia with the low dollar," he said. "And there are a lot more people from America to come to see Australia than Australians going to America."
Across the Tasman, Air New Zealand (Air NZ) has performed its last B737-300 service after deploying the various variants of the aircraft for forty-seven years. It has replaced the B737 fleet with 27 A320s.
