Australia - Honolulu: what is the truth?
Earlier this week, Jetstar announced that it would start flying to Honolulu. The Jetstar CEO is his press statement said
1. they would operate Sydney-Honolulu (3 per week) and Melbourne-Honolulu (2 per week) services initially with a fleet of 303 seat Airbus A330-200 - subject to regulatory approval blah blah blah.
2. “Qantas will continue to operate 3 times weekly Sydney-Honolulu services upon Jetstar’s start-up of 5 weekly services split across both Sydney and Melbourne markets,”.
Is point 2 true, or is it spin pending the successful application for full ETOPS by Jetstar? It would appear that Jetstar will be operating YSSY-PHNL on the same days as Qantas with only a couple of hours between their flights. The Jetstar flight numbers seen are exactly the same as those used by Qantas.
Also, Jetstar will be offering an additional 1,515 seats a week between Australia and PHNL. How can the outbound market support a significant increase like this without a bloodbath and as a consequence, a couple of players will take their bats and balls home?
Are we being told the whole truth? What else is news I s'pose if the opposite is the case?