Qantas hits back at Virgin Blue with 820,000 Jetstar seats
Qantas is taking the fight to Virgin Blue’s plans to dominate the domestic air travel market amongst business travellers by adding 820,000 seats to its Jetstar discount airline.
Virgin Blue last week announced a net profit for the year to to June 30, 2010 of $21.3 million, with Virgin Blue’s domestic short haul business posting an underlying pre-tax profit of $128 million. Qantas is desperate to carve additional profit out of Virgin Blue’s short haul domestic routes, which are profitable primarily due to the large number of business airfares booked on short notice at higher margins than personal airfares.
Qantas told the Herald Sun yesterday that Victoria and South Australia would see an additional 21 Jetstar flights per week out of Adelaide and Melbourne. Over half of the additional 820,000 seats Qantas is allocating, some 440,000 Jetstar airfares would be on flights out of Melbourne.
Jetstar announced this aggressive plan after Virgin Blue signed an agreement with Etihad last week to connect Virgin Blue’s international arm V Australia to Etihad’s Abu Dhabi hub with flights between Sydney and Brisbane and the Middle East from November.
Jetstar chief executive Bruce Buchanan risks cannibalising Qantas’ profitable domestic business margins with the increase in Jetstar flight frequency, however Mr Buchannan believes the additional Jetstar flights are great news for customers, particularly due to the greater frequency which should appeal to business customers.
Jetstar will add 45 weekly services flying out of Sydney and Melbourne, with Melbourne’s Tullamarine airport to feature heavily in Jetstar’s plans to conquer the business market, with the airline flying 310 return flights per week out of the international airport hub, with only 40 of the airlines 350 Melbourne flights weekly coming out of Avalon, which is further from the Melbourne CBD according to the Herald Sun.
When is QANTAS and Jetstar going to upgrade services in Brisbane? It seems to me that there are only three places these airlines are interested in and that is Sydney, Melbourne and Perth. QANTAS and Jetstar are not interested in Brisbane. QANTAS and Jetstar have very few international flights out of Brisbane. The A330′s are serviced here but they do not fly to Brisbane. They talk of 820,000 seats where? I read Melbourne to Adelaide. They talk of 45 extra services weekly. Looking at the schedules there are no extra services. There is supposed to be an extra daily service from Brisbane to Cairns. I can’t see it! The timetable on the QANTAS site doesn’t show any increase. The number of seats means nothing, where are these flights in the schedule?
QANTAS does have a significant international operation at Brisbane. Indeed, not only do the A330-300 jets get serviced in Brisbane, the operate regular flights from Brisbane to Hong Kong. Also, Qantas has a daily flight, with the A330 to Singapore, from Brisbane. Several times a week, this flight, which originates in Brisbane, flies onto Mumbai in India. These are three international destinations served directly from Brisbane, by the A330! Oh, and the weekly flight from Brisbane to Manila… Not to forget daily 737 services to 3 New Zealand destinations, and daily 747 flights to Los Angeles!!
Rohan, Brisbane is just a secondary international airport. That is how QANTAS and Jetstar see us. We get the secondary international routes (as you said those worked with 737′s). The double-daily services to Auckland are worked with ageing 737-400′s. The one A330 service that Brisbane has daily to Singapore has to connect with about three flights to Europe (the A380′s) that originate in Sydney and Melbourne and then fly to Mumbai (that is not direct). At the end of this month Brisbane loses a daily 767 service to Tokyo. I don’t share your enthusiasm Rohan but QANTAS would rather have us hub through Sydney to boost their figures and at the moment I cannot understand why they would want that given its congestion. Perhaps Sydney will get so busy they will hub people through Brisbane in 5 years time! Virgin Blue are leasing some A330′s for domestic services and once again it is Sydney, Melbourne and Perth they will be operating to. Virgin Blue is axing Phuket so that is another destination that has gone. The aircraft go to Sydney for direct services to Abu Dbabi. (Etihad flies three times a week from Brisbane to Abu Dhabi through Singapore). We lose again! The flights to LA are not daily but 6 days a week worked with ageing 747-400′s. Check the QANTAS schedules. Sydney and Melbourne have got all the A380′s. That is where they want the tourists not in Brisbane. If QANTAS won’t fly to Tokyo, Honolulu, Ho Chi Minh, London and other major centres from Brisbane bring on the foreign airlines!