Fares level out after Ansett
Fri "The Australian"
Fares level out after Ansett
By Steve Creedy, Industry statistics
February 07, 2003
DISCOUNT domestic airfares did not rise in real terms after the demise of Ansett and last November were about 23 per cent below their level of three years ago, according to the Bureau of Transport and Regional Economics.
In the first edition of a new bi-annual analysis of the aviation sector, the bureau said real discounted domestic airfares were also almost 18 per cent below their levels of a decade ago.
"Despite widespread perception that domestic discount air fares increased following the demise of Ansett, that is not evident in the BTRE's published domestic real airfare series," the bureau said.
"It is more likely that the large reduction in flights and capacity reduced the availability of discount seats."
According to the analysis, full economy and business fares rose about 5 per cent in real terms up to May, but had since dropped to June 2000 levels, if airport charges were discounted.
"However, in real terms the fully flexible, full economy and business fare series were almost 9 per cent and 34.5 per cent, respectively, above December quarter 1992 levels," it said.
The new analysis, called Avline, brings together a grab-bag of aviation information and in future will be issued each April and October.
BTRE executive director Tony Slayter said Avline would provide a concise analysis of current and emerging policy issues by highlighting facts indicating key events, providing commentary and discussing emerging issues.
It found preliminary regional and domestic passenger numbers for the June quarter of last year showed demand had returned to just below June quarter 1999 levels.
Regional and domestic passenger kilometres in the 2002 June quarter were 4.3 per cent higher than the equivalent 1999 period, while the total number of passengers fell.
"This means that, on average, passengers are travelling further," it said.
The first issue also looked at airport charges during the period of transition from the CPI-X regime to price monitoring from July 1, 2002.
The analysis found that Adelaide, Perth, Brisbane and Melbourne airports substantially increased their charges between January 31 and July 31 2002.
But it said there were major differences in the charge increases between airports, and the ranking of airports varied between aircraft categories.
For a Saab 340B regional return flight, for example, Adelaide had the lowest equivalent charge per return passenger of $3.50 and Perth the highest at $7.92.
On a domestic 737-800 return flight, charges ranged from $4.97 at Sydney to $9.62 at Adelaide.
But for an international Boeing 747-400 flight, Brisbane was lowest at $17.90 and Sydney highest at $31.38, including terminal charges.