Wirraway
15th Nov 2004, 15:48
Tues "Sydney Morning Herald"
SingAir back on Anderson's radar
By Scott Rochfort
November 16, 2004
Fresh doubts have surfaced over Qantas's stranglehold on the Sydney-Los Angeles route after the Federal Transport Minister, John Anderson, flagged resuming open skies talks with the Singapore Government.
More than a year after the talks were postponed until there was "greater stability in the global aviation environment", Mr Anderson told the Dow Jones news service he was now "prepared to seriously consider" reopening the talks.
"I believe that the global outlook has stabilised and improved and we gave the Singaporeans a commitment that when things had settled down we would talk to them again," he told Dow Jones.
The Singapore Government has been calling for the talks to reopen since July.
An open skies agreement would allow Singapore Airlines to fulfil its dream of snatching high-yielding business traffic on the Australia-US route. In return, Qantas could be allowed increased rights to fly to other Asian cities from Singapore.
Qantas makes about 15 per cent of its profits from the LA route, where it controls about 75 per cent of direct flights and United Airlines the rest.
Aside from Singapore Air jockeying hard to get on the route, there have been concerns raised within the local tourism industry that the lack of capacity (and high load factors) on the route were costing Australia thousands of potential US holidaymakers.
According to the latest monthly statistics published by the Department of Transport, United Airlines filled 95.9 per cent of seats on inbound flights to the US in July; Qantas filled 85.1 per cent of its seats.
This compares with an average load factor of 79 per cent for all flights into Australia that month.
Tourism Australia estimates that a "slippage" in visitor numbers occurs when airline load factors climb above 80 per cent.
Singapore Airlines welcomed Mr Anderson's comments. A spokeswoman for the airline, Samantha Stewart, said: "We can assure you that we are as interested as we have always been in flying that route."
Qantas, however, referred the Herald to its comments in the Dow Jones report, where it said the aviation environment was still unstable.
But some aviation pundits remained circumspect about Mr Anderson's comments, given the minister gave a time frame of 12 to 18 months for any agreement.
"It looks like he's going to buy some time for Qantas one way or the other," said Ian Thomas, of the Centre for Asia Pacific Aviation.
Despite Qantas and United recently announcing an increase in services to the US, Macquarie Equities analyst Ian Myles noted capacity on the Australia-US route was still at 1995 levels.
Meanwhile, one year after pushing the Department of Transport to publish on-time data, Virgin Blue has slipped behind to have the worst on-time performance of any domestic airline. In September, only 76.6 per cent of Virgin's flights departed on time, compared with Qantas's 85.3 per cent and Jetstar's 87.6 per cent.
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SingAir back on Anderson's radar
By Scott Rochfort
November 16, 2004
Fresh doubts have surfaced over Qantas's stranglehold on the Sydney-Los Angeles route after the Federal Transport Minister, John Anderson, flagged resuming open skies talks with the Singapore Government.
More than a year after the talks were postponed until there was "greater stability in the global aviation environment", Mr Anderson told the Dow Jones news service he was now "prepared to seriously consider" reopening the talks.
"I believe that the global outlook has stabilised and improved and we gave the Singaporeans a commitment that when things had settled down we would talk to them again," he told Dow Jones.
The Singapore Government has been calling for the talks to reopen since July.
An open skies agreement would allow Singapore Airlines to fulfil its dream of snatching high-yielding business traffic on the Australia-US route. In return, Qantas could be allowed increased rights to fly to other Asian cities from Singapore.
Qantas makes about 15 per cent of its profits from the LA route, where it controls about 75 per cent of direct flights and United Airlines the rest.
Aside from Singapore Air jockeying hard to get on the route, there have been concerns raised within the local tourism industry that the lack of capacity (and high load factors) on the route were costing Australia thousands of potential US holidaymakers.
According to the latest monthly statistics published by the Department of Transport, United Airlines filled 95.9 per cent of seats on inbound flights to the US in July; Qantas filled 85.1 per cent of its seats.
This compares with an average load factor of 79 per cent for all flights into Australia that month.
Tourism Australia estimates that a "slippage" in visitor numbers occurs when airline load factors climb above 80 per cent.
Singapore Airlines welcomed Mr Anderson's comments. A spokeswoman for the airline, Samantha Stewart, said: "We can assure you that we are as interested as we have always been in flying that route."
Qantas, however, referred the Herald to its comments in the Dow Jones report, where it said the aviation environment was still unstable.
But some aviation pundits remained circumspect about Mr Anderson's comments, given the minister gave a time frame of 12 to 18 months for any agreement.
"It looks like he's going to buy some time for Qantas one way or the other," said Ian Thomas, of the Centre for Asia Pacific Aviation.
Despite Qantas and United recently announcing an increase in services to the US, Macquarie Equities analyst Ian Myles noted capacity on the Australia-US route was still at 1995 levels.
Meanwhile, one year after pushing the Department of Transport to publish on-time data, Virgin Blue has slipped behind to have the worst on-time performance of any domestic airline. In September, only 76.6 per cent of Virgin's flights departed on time, compared with Qantas's 85.3 per cent and Jetstar's 87.6 per cent.
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