from the australian
THE battle for Western Australia's skies intensified last night as Virgin Blue signed a strategic code share agreement with rapidly expanding local airline Skywest.
The Virgin partnership came as QantasLink this week announced a relationship with Brisbane-based Alliance Airlines to take advantage of the resource-rich state's rapid growth in air travel.
The move significantly increases Virgin's footprint in regional Western Australia and gives its passengers seamless access to a network that will now include Port Hedland, Kalgoorlie-Boulder and Kununurra while providing additional flights between Perth and Broome.
It allows travellers from February 4 to buy Virgin Blue fares to Perth and connect seamlessly to Skywest flights, while Skywest passengers can do the same in the opposite direction.
Travellers on both carriers will now be able to check luggage through to their final destination and tickets on all codeshare flights will be eligible to earn Velocity frequent flyer points.
Skywest, which only two years ago had three under-utilised 100-seat Fokker 100s operating just five hours a day, will take delivery of its sixth and seventh Fokker 100s in the next eight weeks and all are almost fully committed to regular public transport or resources industry fly-in/fly-out contracts.
At the same time, the airline has added two more 46-seat Fokker 50s for a fleet total of seven.
Virgin Blue chief executive Brett Godfrey said the airlines already worked together through Skywest's participation in the Velocity program.
"The codeshare agreement is a strengthening of co-operation between our two airlines," Mr Godfrey said.
"Increasing our codeshare partnerships is part of Virgin Blue's New World Carrier strategy to give especially corporate travellers more benefits and more options through an enhanced network to our guests."
Skywest chief executive Paul Daff said the codeshare opened up seamless travel between Sydney or Melbourne and some of Western Australia's premier destinations.
He said the airline hoped to further grow the east coast market and to build exposure to Skywest's WA destinations.
Alliance, which has established a base in Perth, has snared a daily Perth-Karratha and Perth-Port Hedland service with a Fokker 100. The aircraft will be in addition to the two F-100s Alliance has in Perth for resource industry contract work and will be painted in QantasLink livery.
The Qantas Group currently operates 19 return services per week between Perth and Port Hedland and 35 return services a week between Perth and Karratha.
The decision appears to be a blow to National Jet Systems, which operates 11 Boeing 717s for QantasLink and was negotiating with Qantas to bring another online.
But Qantas general manager regional airlines Narendra Kumar rejected any suggestion the Alliance decision reflected any deterioration of the relationship.
"The F100 is providing supplementary capacity for QantasLink due to strong demand in WA," Mr Kumar said.
"We retain a strong and growing relationship with NJS.
"In March 2007, QantasLink extended its 15-year relationship with NJS, adding three B717s to the existing fleet of eight and extending the contract to 2013.
"The use of these aircraft precluded NJS from introducing additional aircraft in the timeframe we requested."
NJS did have spare BAe146 capacity after losing a daily fly-in/fly-out contract with Newcrest Mining but it appears to have turned its back on the type after operating a sizeable fleet with NJS throughout the 1990s.
This situation poses a dilemma for NJS, which is faced with increased competition from Alliance and Skywest with more modern Fokker 100s and Virgin Blue's Embraer jets.
Until recently the four-engine BAe146 had a significant advantage over other jets because of its performance into many of the typically shorter mine-site runways.
However, a number of key resource companies are extending runways to accommodate larger jets such as the Boeing 737-800 and Airbus A320, thus negating the BAe146's advantage - particularly in summer with temperatures regularly topping 45C.