|
Australian air battle looms
TRAVELCONSUMERDAILY.COM According to one of Australia’s most respected airline industry analysts, Peter Harbison, founder of Sydney’s Centre for Asia-Pacific Aviation, we’re headed for ''the mother” of all domestic airline battles.
Until a decade ago, the industry gospel was that Australia wasn’t big enough to support more than two. The theory held sway as first Impulse Airlines ran out of money and became part of Qantas, then Virgin Blue arrived a year before Ansett imploded. The theory was stretched in 2004 when Qantas invented Jetstar: the two Qantas brands would compete in totally different ends of the market, but they eventually found they could profitably compete against each other in some places. Invited in by Australia’s ultra-liberal regulations allowing foreign carriers to run domestic services, Tiger Airways, struggling to get international air rights from its home base in Singapore because of the region’s protectionism, brought down a small fleet of planes in 2007. For the first two years, Tiger lost money hand over fist in Australia. Now it claims it is “breaking even” with a loss of only about $500,000 in the year to March. Tiger says it is here for the long haul and few doubt it since Tiger is half-owned by Singapore Airlines.
Comment on this article |
For the first time in the 20 years of airline deregulation, we’re going to test the theory, often derided by industry cynics, that there is indeed room for at least four separate mainline airline brands in Australia.