|
Tiger axes Alice route
TRAVELCONSUMERDAILY.COM TIGER Airways will end half its remaining Australian services to the Northern Territory next month when it axes its three weekly flights from Adelaide to Alice Springs. The airline will continue to operate just three services a week from Melbourne. Tiger had earlier axed daily services to the NT capital, Darwin, from both Melbourne and Singapore. Tiger blamed Darwin airport’s high charges, which are the highest for any privatised airport in Australia – nearly $20 per sector per passenger, including about $10 for security screening (for which other airports charge as little as $1). The same company, Airport Development Group, through Northern Territory Airports Pty Ltd, owns Alice Springs and Tennant Creek airports in the NT, but Tiger had said previously it had worked out acceptable commercial terms with Alice Springs airport. A spokeswoman for Tiger Airways blamed a decline in demand for the decision to axe the Adelaide-Alice Springs services from the end of April. "It's a commercial reality and Tiger Airways will continually review and develop its network on routes that reflect consumer demand so that the airline can continue to offer the lowest fares," she said. Northern Territory Airports said Tiger Airways remained a "key partner" (this year’s corporate slang for "customer"). NT Airports chief executive Ian Kew said Tiger had commercial reasons for stopping the service. "We're not entirely surprised," he told the ABC. "We thought Adelaide-Alice would be [a] tougher market than Melbourne-Alice. "That route Melbourne-Alice is doing exceedingly well. It's growing strongly. It is much more profitable and we would hope they would add extra capacity and extra seats onto that route in the not too distant future." Adelaide-Alice Springs, like all but the Melbourne route, will revert to a Qantas monopoly, with substantially higher fares. With price competition from Tiger, Qantas currently has a $129 one-way sale special on the Melbourne-Alice Springs route, compared with the usual best discount of around $200 one-way. Even though former Jetstar chief executive Alan Joyce now heads Qantas, the carrier has never allowed its low-cost leisure subsidiary to operate what are mainly leisure routes to the Red Centre. As a result, Qantas’s discounted fares to Alice Springs are roughly double those available on comparable competitive domestic routes in Australia. Comment on this article |
