QANTAS chief executive-elect, Alan Joyce, has wasted little time getting stuck into the airline’s domestic rivals in Australia.
Joyce will take over the top job at Qantas from Geoff Dixon on November 28, relinquishing his current position as CEO of Qantas low-cost offshoot Jetstar.
The decision to opt for Joyce rather than other highly credentialed Qantas executives signals that Jetstar will have a bigger role in the future.
Jetstar has already moved to fill a gap after its low cost rival in Australia, Tiger Airways, announced it would shut down its Melbourne and Singapore services from Darwin from October 26, claiming charges at the Northern Territory airport were too expensive at a time of industry hardship.
Tiger Aviation COO, Steve Burns, said combined airport and fuel costs in Darwin were more than any of the 27 airports that the airline serves across Australia and Asia.
“It is just incompatible for a true lowfare airline to operate to such a high cost destination,” he said
Jetstar, meanwhile, said it would seek to build the infrastructure necessary for the carrier to base up to seven aircraft in Darwin over the next five years, with three based there by the middle of next year. The airline will target Asian destinations four to five hours from Darwin.
Jetstar says it will ramp up Darwin- Singapore flights to three a day and expand flights to Ho Chi Minh City via Darwin to five a week from September 1.
“With the support of the (Australian) government, the airport and local industry we can potentially re position Darwin as a strategic transport hub into near Asia,” Joyce said.
The Jetstar CEO accused Tiger of doing “a great job of a lot of bluster and promoting what they’re going to do and re-announcing things that they’ve done three or four times to get free publicity… and I have to say it’s the low cost carrier way of doing it.
“I’m sure Jetstar’s done a little bit of that as well but they (Tiger) have not grown as fast as they have said they would.”
Joyce said he would continue to give equal prominence to Qantas and Jetstar when he takes control of the flag carrier later this year.
He said rumours that Australia’s national carrier would become a low-cost carrier under his stewardship were wide of the mark.
“I believe that the two brand strategy has been absolutely brilliant in that we’ve picked the two brands to target different segments of the market and they’ve been very successful at that.
“Qantas has really invested a lot in its product and I think under my leadership I’ll invest more, because I think that yield premium we get for that superior product is something that we need to protect and we need to grow.
“At the same time, we’ve targeted Jetstar as the low fares operator into a segment that it’s done very well in and it has the price leadership. That’s a unique combination that I don’t want to ever lose.”
Tiger Airways Australia’s latest gambit is to lobby the federal government to axe requirements that international airlines operating from this Australia must be 51 percent Australian-owned.
Tiger said it should be allowed to fly from Australia as long as Australia remains its principal place of business.
Tiger chief executive Tony Davis said opening up the international routes would allow Tiger to bring in more planes and provide more jobs, and it would pay tax on its operations.
He said the airline wanted to fly from Australia to destinations such as Kuala Lumpur, recently vacated by rival Jetstar.
