Jetstar/Dogstar
With respect, I work at Cairns airport and I know how much the people who work there are paid, and I work for a company that pays a lot more than the rest. The problem is that the fees for airlines to use the facilities are the second most expensive in the world.
The CX flights to HKG are chock-a-block. They are not code shared. QF are handling agents only. Jetstar Asia flights are minimallly booked and generally with people from Europe who have been duped into believing they were travelling on QF services.
My concern is that residents of Cairns and potential international visitors do not have direct access to a competitive airline industry. The traffic is there. Qantas does not want it so the market should be opened up to other airlines free of charge. It should be remembered that the Cairns Port Authority is a statutory authority, owned by the QLD goverment, and last year made a profit of $50,000,000 on a vastly under-utilised facility.
I would suggest that the absence of foreign carriers into and out of Cairns is due to QF objecting to the competition and nothing else.