Qantas And Jetstar Increase Domestic Flights

[Brad Myer]

Qantas Group Announces Increase in Domestic Capacity

The Qantas Group today announced plans to increase capacity across its domestic route network by 9.6 per cent, including a number of new routes for both Qantas and Jetstar.

Qantas Chief Executive Officer, Mr Alan Joyce, said over the next nine months the Group would increase capacity by more than 66,000 seats per week once fully implemented, with the addition of new aircraft to the domestic fleet and in response to the recovering domestic market.

“We are seeing improved demand domestically and the introduction of these additional services and aircraft will see the Qantas Group well placed to meet this demand,” he said.

“The changes will see around 65 additional return services for Qantas and around 120 return services for Jetstar introduced across selected routes.

“Seven additional aircraft will be deployed on the Qantas domestic network this financial year. In July 2010, we added a B767-300 to grow routes including the key east – west market of Sydney to Perth.”

Mr Joyce said an A330-300 will be added from January with a further five B737-800s being progressively added to the domestic network from March 2011.

“These aircraft will be deployed on a variety of growth markets, including the east coast, east – west and intra WA markets,” Mr Joyce said.

Qantas will commence direct Brisbane-Broome services next year, resulting in Broome becoming the third destination behind Perth and Karratha that Queensland passengers can fly to direct from Brisbane. The new services will be seasonal, operating from April-October, to coincide with the Broome dry season.

This new service will join Broome-Melbourne and Broome-Sydney services, resulting in passengers from the popular tourist destination being able to fly direct from Broome to three east-coast destinations, as well as Perth.

Mr Joyce said Jetstar would also add new routes and increase services to key leisure destinations across Australia.

“Jetstar plans to increase Australian domestic capacity by up to 30 per cent in this financial year,” Mr Joyce said.

“Last week Jetstar announced new services in Perth and Launceston and today detailed additional services to Cairns – an important tourism destination.

“With Qantas and Jetstar, the Qantas Group has two strong and complementary brands to ensure we are able to respond to opportunities and changing market conditions.

“Qantas and Jetstar now jointly operate on over 20 routes across Australia, including the high traffic Sydney to Melbourne route”.

Wonder where the A330-300 will come from? New? Leased?

Pulled of Intl routes? Cant see how... The A333 fleet is already maxed out with Intl flying as it is. MNL goes A333 from NOV as well.

[Todd Hendry]

I'm pretty sure its a typo.
Should read A330-200 which is due by the end of the year.

[Jarden S]

According to today's Cairns Post the Cairns to Gold Coast is going up to daily from 3 per week. Is there enough demand for that route?

[Harry G]

When they are trying to fight off Tiger there is demand!

[Kain C]

From the Cairns Post http://www.cairns.com.au/article/2010/08/25/123911_local-news.html:

Jetstar confirms daily Gold Coast-Cairns service

Wednesday, August 25, 2010

© The Cairns Post

JETSTAR has announced 25 additional weekly return services to Cairns, adding extra daily flights from Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane.

The budget airline will also establish a daily return flight between Cairns and the Gold Coast.

"Our commitment to building to a daily Gold Coast-Cairns service will also better support inbound international visitation," Jetstar Group CEO Bruce Buchanan said.

Lift-off for Kiwi Jetstar flights from Cairns | Jetstar plane 'nearly hit' city: passenger | Jetstar launches Cairns-Japan flights


The latest series of extra services represents 8850 more weekly seats in flights to Cairns and a $100 million investment by Jetstar in the city.

Full report in tomorrow's The Cairns Post.



So extra daily to each of MEL,SYD,BNE plus 4 per week extra to OOL adds up to 25 extra exactly.

[Jarden S]

Be nice if they made the PER and ADL flights to CNS daily while they are at it.
I wonder if Qantas will start CBR-CNS 3 per week and get there before someone else does. Maybe they could start Sydney to Port Hedland before strategic get a look in.

[Kain C]

The full report from The Cairns Post http://www.cairns.com.au/article/2010/08/26/124065_local-news.html

Jetstar boosts daily flights into Cairns
Nick Dalton

Thursday, August 26, 2010

© The Cairns Post

LOW-cost carrier Jetstar has backed its confidence in Cairns by investing another $100 million in the destination with an extra 25 new weekly domestic flights, an extra 460,200 seats a year to Cairns.

Jetstar Group chief executive Bruce Buchanan said it represented an expansion by the airline in Cairns by nearly a third and was the airline's largest addition of new domestic flights for the city.

"Jetstar will now be at record capacity on Melbourne-Cairns and Sydney-Cairns routes and complement Qantas on the largest Brisbane-Cairns market," he said.

Mr Buchanan said factors behind the new flights included the long-term pricing contract the airline had with the airport and the success of the extra domestic flights introduced earlier this year.

He said the reinstated Osaka flights were showing strong growth and New Zealand had great potential.

Mr Buchanan said Jetstar also was adding more aircraft to its fleet to increase capacity.

Airport chief executive Stephen Gregg said the new flights were "another great step in recovery for the tourism
industry".

He said there was a strong relationship between Jetstar, the airport and the tourism industry.

Mr Gregg said the announcement highlighted Jetstar's confidence in Cairns.

"It's been a very good season and next year is only going to get better," he said.

Tourism Tropical North Queensland chief executive Rob Giason said the new flights would bring the number of domestic flights to Cairns almost back to the levels of two-and-a-half years ago.

He said the extra flights would be worth up to $30 million a year to the region's economy.

Mr Giason said the daily flights to the Gold Coast were critical links between the state's two leading tourism
destinations.

"It makes a lot of sense and will drive a lot of business. It's an incredible domestic market for us," he said.

Mr Giason said in the next six months the industry could start recapturing business lost over the past two-and-a-half years of the economic downturn.


The bit about long term pricing at the airport is interesting; given that the current pricing agreement at HBA (which was due to expire in June, but got extended) is due to expire on September 1, only a few days away. One last bit of leverage perhaps?

As for CNS-PER and CNS-ADL Jarden, I noticed last night that the additional CNS-OOL have been loaded into the JQ system, and the aircraft operates OOL-CNS-OOL for the 4 extra flights, with the 3 existing CNS-OOL-CNS remaining that way. Maybe they will make the OOL-CNS-OOL daily to free up the aircraft to do CNS-ADL-CNS daily? Otherwise 3 per week OOL-HBA-OOL on the days it doesn't go to CNS would be nice!

[Brad Myer]

Looks like the QF press release has been corrected:

Mr Joyce said an A330-200 will be added from January with a further five B737-800s being progressively added to the domestic network from March 2011.

Must be the new domestic A332 due at the end of the year.

Thanks

[Adam W]

The new A330 won't add any extra capacity as EBJ will be moved to JQ when the new one arrives.

[Wenglock M]

Could there be a change in plans (i.e. both EBO and EBP go to QF instead of just EBO as planned)?

[Kain C]

JQ will operate double daily BNE-LST from Dec 10 until Jan 31. What is it with these pathetic little routes like BNE-LST, NTL-OOL etc that seem to get all the services? What does HBA-MEL have to do to get additional services? It's gone beyond insulting now :mad: :mad: :mad:

[Nathan Bartlett]

Maybe lower their airport costs! :D

That means we will have 8 flights per day during that period! 4X MEL 2X SYD and 2X BNE!

[Kain C]

Plus your 6 QLink LST-MEL!

[Ryan K]

Spot on Andrew.

Kain consistantly complains about anything that is positive for Launceston. Perhaps the management of LST Airport are doing something better than those at HBA Airport. Their airport fees may be big factor in the extra services JQ and QF are puting into Launceston over summer.

Kain, just be happy that Tasmania is getting these extra services, even if you do deem them to be "pathetic".

Personally I think it's great that Launceston, a city of 100,000 people has an airport that over the summer months can service 8 JQ flights, up to 6 DJ flights and up to 6 QF flights daily!

[Ryan K]

Maybe lower their airport costs! :D

That means we will have 8 flights per day during that period! 4X MEL 2X SYD and 2X BNE!

Go Lonnie!

[Kain C]

How are these routes 'pathetic' Kain?

I think the term is more aligned to your post...

Have a look at the load factors for NTL-OOL. All in the 60's and 70's for a long period, yet for some reason JQ think they need more seats and scheduled the second daily flight within a hour of the first! With both flights at lunchtime you can't argue about yields either. Everyone knows it is nothing to do with demand, it was simply a move to over-saturate the market to stop TT opening an OOL base.

Then LST-BNE; no-one in their right mind could possibly argue that there is demand for double daily LST-BNE yet no demand for a single weekly HBA-BNE. It is well known that JQs LST-BNE has always received subsidies from day 1. DJ started LST-BNE with a 78 seat E170 and pulled out because there wasn't enough demand. Now there is demand for 354 seats per day? I don't think so - unless you funnel all the HBA traffic via LST!

Then look at LST-SYD. On the back of recording -11.8% and -6.9% growth for May and June (latest figures), somehow that route requires double the seats year round from JQ despite the fact that it is HBA-SYD that is growing???

As for airport charges, well MEL,SYD,BNE are up with the highest in the country, yet they seem to be able to attract plenty of additional services to LST,PER,CNS etc. HBA is still cheaper to land at than SYD, OOL, CBR, MCY etc yet those ports all recieve additional services.

Perhaps the management of LST Airport are doing something better than those at HBA Airport. Perhaps because the tourism minister is from Launceston they can use southern taxpayers money to subsidise LST services, where as HBA pays for everything itself? I don't know if that's right, but there is some hidden reason somewhere because it has nothing to do with demand nor trends.

Kain consistantly complains about anything that is positive for Launceston.

I have no problem with anywhere getting services appropriate to the demand. I dislike inefficiency and waste. HBA is already underserviced, and with one of Australia's top tourism drawcards, the MONA museum, opening in January, demand will be even higher. Sooner or later something positive will have to happen for Hobart. It is a one-way street at the moment.

[Jarden S]

Has anyone got the full list of new flights being started with QF/JQ?

[Ryan K]

Perhaps because the tourism minister is from Launceston they can use southern taxpayers money to subsidise LST services, where as HBA pays for everything itself? I don't know if that's right, but there is some hidden reason somewhere because it has nothing to do with demand nor trends.

This, ladies and gentlemen is a classic example of Tasmanian north/south parochialism!

[Kain C]

Correct. I can only tolerate the north getting everything for so long. Just remember HBA is the goose that lays the golden eggs for all of Tasmania. If you don't feed it, HBA will not be able to generate the funds to subsidise the north, and then everyone's stuffed!

[Ryan K]

I rest my case. :rolleyes:

[Jarden S]

Also LST has completely lost all services from Tiger while HBA only lost the ADL flights. So while HBA not gain any new flights it not loose so much that LST did. Its a classic case for both cities you win some and you loose some.

[Kain C]

Not correct. TT used to operate double daily HBA-MEL, but now only operate 11 per week, 7 of which depart HBA at 22:15, so not overly great. So HBA has lost 4 x ADL, 3 x MEL = 7, same as LST. From the end of October, TT only operate 10 per week HBA-MEL (but at least the times are friendly) so in fact HBA loses 1 more than LST.

But it's no use trying to convince these northern Tasmanians. They have no concept of money, since everything up there is funded from coffers from the South. The fact is, it costs money to run airports and operate flights. Someone has to pay for that. Seems that gone are the days where an airline operated flights according to the demands of passengers. It is all about extorting funds from airports and governments; any paying passengers or freight are simply a bonus for the airline, not the primary revenue. It is another unsustainable race to the bottom. JQ seem to have forgotten that HBA and DRW were the top two performing airports over the recent downturn. If it wasn't for the growth of HBA passengers during this period they might have operated in the red. Then when it comes time for the rebound, HBA is ready to accelerate further, trends are pointing to a record season, we've built the extra hotels etc and we get nothing from JQ but the cowardly attempts of extorting funds. Meanwhile, other areas where passenger numbers are falling get an almost 50% increase in seats, only because of the receipt of bribes essentially???

Where are all these alledged extra passengers going to accomodate when they get to LST? Because we are on an island, TAS requires slower steady growth, because all passengers must be new passengers, not passengers transferring from other modes, eg car. This is different to say OOL, MCY, where JQ can pick up extra pax who choose to fly instead of drive. Hence in OOL, MCY the accomodation etc is already in place, where as in TAS it is not so much. If these flights mean that fewer people travel over on the boat (another service for the north subsidised by the south), then it just means those subsidies go to waste!!!

My final point on this matter just to clear up a misconception; others on this board have wrongly assumed that I am anti LST. Not so. I am simply frustrated that HBA has been one of the top performing airports recently, yet is just about the only airport to receive no increases. Where is the logic in that? Meanwhile, JQ seem to reward airports performing mediocrely with addiditional services??? Other than that, we might just have to agree to disagree, since this topic needs to be brought back on track.

[Jarden S]

Cairns airport has a new contract with Jetstar which is really paying off big time with the airline doubling the number of flights to here in less than a year. If Hobart could some how copy this successful agreement that we have it too may see a massive expansion of capacity to the airport and maybe Jetstar could launch new routes from HBA to ADL, PER, and OOL etc or even to NZ!

[Lukas M]

LST is owned by MEL airport so mabye that has something to do with it.

[Brad Myer]

Jetstar has just announced more flight increases:

*Extra daily SYD-ADL-SYD
*Extra daily MEL-ADL-MEL
*Extra daily SYD-BNE-SYD
*Extra daily MEL-BNE-MEL
*Additional weekly SYD-TSV-SYD services
*Additional weekly SYD-BNK-SYD services

[Jon B]

Actually the Tassie Ferry service is not subsidised by the South as such but by all Australian Taxpayers via the freight equalisation scheme so that effectively a "road" freight rate should apply to goods to and from Tassie. Thus why taking your car on the ferry is relatively cheap.

The North also has Burnie/Wynyard and devonport airports with regional airline services to Melbourne so still well served for the population i think

[Mike W]

Geez, the feud between the Tassie North and South sounds like the McCoys and Hatfields, redneck connection intended.