Feb. 5 – Qantas, Australia’s largest airline, is currently overhauling its Asian strategy by featuring Singapore, Hong Kong and Bangkok as prominent regional hubs as part of its rescheduling of flight times. The strategy is initially aimed to boost Qantas’ penetration of Asia with better connections to flights on partner airlines, but has long term goals to resume growth of its own direct flights to locations such as Beijing, Seoul, Mumbai, Delhi and Tokyo-Haneda. This move is also set to provide better connections to an additional 35 Asian routes.
Presently, Qantas’ flights to Asia are timed to connect with flights bound for Europe or the United States (U.S.) – that is, the flights arrive late in the business day for Asian focused executives. As an answer to this, Qantas will bring these regional hub arrival times forward by three hours to allow executives early and mid-morning arrival times in these cities. In addition, capacity will be boosted on Singapore and Hong Kong flights where Qantas will no longer reserve seats for on-going flights to Europe or the U.S.
The change means a reduction in Qantas’ Perth-Singapore services from two to only one a day, and an end to its Adelaide-Singapore and Perth-Hong Kong services. This will be offset, however, by increases in services to Sydney and Brisbane. Qantas’ capacity to Asia in terms of passengers is expected to be boosted by 40 percent as a result of this recalibration towards the region and away from the U.S. and Europe. Qantas will also offer similar services for its low cost Asian airline subsidiary JetStar, which is already centered at Changi airport in Singapore.
Peter Harbison, managing director at the Center for Asia Pacific Aviation, agreed that Qantas’ changes were logical and that it would take full advantage of Jetstar’s penetration into the Asian market.
“There is certainly much more growth in the Asian markets,” Mr Harbison said. “China alone had 500,000 inbound tourists this year, and [will have] a million by 2020.”
Qantas will open its new passenger lounge at Changi Airport on 31 March.
