Sky's the limit for new aviation star in Asia
That is the title from an article in Monday's Herald Sun.
Here are quotes from the article.
"Buchanan leads the world's fastest growing low-fare airline group, staying ahead of a North Asian market expansion of about 20 per cent a year fuelled by China's and South Korea's massive rising middle classes.
And he speaks with the authority of the increasing autonomy of the international Jetstar Group - which he sees inevitably overtaking the size of its parent, Qantas - and a confident directness on the local rivals Virgin Australia and the beleaguered Tiger."
"Buchanan believes Australians who still think of Jetstar as primarily their locally-based low-cost carrier do not realise it will soon offer 60 destinations, half from the Singapore base of its Jetstar Asia sister.
We've carried 20 million passengers in the past year after seven years of operation - the big low-cost carriers like Air Asia, Ryan Air in Europe, South West in the US, none of them reached that milestone so quickly. We're the fastest growing airline in the history of aviation," he said.
Last week Buchanan unveiled a $500 million investment in new aircraft which will take the Singapore base to four wide-bodied Airbus A330s and 17 A320s, new routes to Beijing, Ningbo and Hanoi and extra flights to Hong Kong, Taipei, Ho Chi Minh City, Kuala Lumpur, Bali and Jakarta."
That's $500 million from QANTAS. The parent company it is bleeding and being propped up by.
"Buchanan "absolutely" believes Jetstar will become bigger than Qantas."
It just about is bigger than QANTAS. We are fast becoming the subsidiary of Jetstar.
"Buchanan is comfortable with carrying the profit load on behalf of struggling Qantas, which he sees as temporary due to the business market strength of Qantas.
But he sees Jetstar revenue as growing faster than that of Qantas."
Maybe QANTAS should cut Jetstar loose and see how much of a profit load it actually carries. It would be a Tiger II. Although we no longer handle Jetstar international, they use QANTAS 330's that are paid for by QANTAS.
"He believes some Qantas long-haul pilot salaries are "exorbitant' by international standards and said he would not tolerate any pay deal which would see Jetstar pilots paid the highest Qantas wages.
"If they try to impose those sorts of conditions, the dire consequences this will actually cause . . . we won't put the Qantas code share on our flights if that actually was to get up," Buchanan said.
"We're happy to get rid of it, no skin off our nose."
Buchanan said Jetstar only had a small proportional revenue on code-share connections to Qantas long-haul flights.
"We'd take the Qantas code off and you know what that will do?" he said."
Sounds like a challenge and a threat to the pilots and QANTAS. He's happy to get rid of the QF codeshare of JQ flights if the pilots don't heed to his demands. Sounds like a future QF CEO is being groomed for when AJ departs.
"It's going to put you (pilots) in a worse situation, because they won't have the passenger traffic to continue to justify flying as many aircraft. So you'll wind up in this ridiculous situation where you cause your own demise even faster."
He sums it up nicely in this last paragraph. The pilots fate is sealed. It will be brought about quicker if they don't stop their dispute, or they are successful.
This looks like a prelude to the 24 August announcement. QANTAS will now be reporting to Jetstar, and Buchanan will be CEO of the Jetstar Group of Airlines.