Qatar denied extra capacity into Australia

[justinbrett]

Ok. Adelaide then. That work? Qantas doesn't fly direct here. We have to make do with the other crumbs.

I mean, we're talking about BA - but sure.

If you're going to LHR, QF does offer you a one stop connection via PER. That's also the quickest option from ADL-LHR by some margin (2:20). It is slower on the return (by 1:35), that said you arrive domestic so no wait for immigration & customs.

BA doesn't fly long haul international out of any city except London (well, except SIN-SYD). As I've said a thousand times on here, it's very normal for foreign airlines to fly to more destinations than local airlines, who tend to focus on their hubs.

 

[Pushka]

I mean, we're talking about BA - but sure.

If you're going to LHR, QF does offer you a one stop connection via PER. That's also the quickest option from ADL-LHR by some margin (2:20). It is slower on the return (by 1:35), that said you arrive domestic so no wait for immigration & customs.

BA doesn't fly long haul international out of any city except London (well, except SIN-SYD). As I've said a thousand times on here, it's very normal for foreign airlines to fly to more destinations than local airlines, who tend to focus on their hubs.

Thought we were talking about Qatar! And for health reasons, a 17 hour flight would be the end of me.

 

[CaptJCool]

There is some wriggle room within the fixed number of flights as the agreement is agnostic to aircraft size

In theory QR could shift fleet to throw more seats into the Australian. Market

As well, they could pump more flights into anywhere outside the Big 4 and make arrangements to get PAX tjere

I heard there’s an international airport at Port Hedland
Plus Darwin, OOL
THEREs plenty of scope for them to get around the decision

Mind you, let’s say @OATEK is right and they are being punished for their outrageous views on body searching Australian woman to “hunt” down, according to them, a culprit of a felony

If I adopt the view that certain values must be adhered to
I wouldn’t have power on at home nor have any airlines with which to flu
Especially QF and their disgusting labour hire BS
And fly the carbon emitters ? ?

like it or not
Every country has different laws
Good luck with flaunting them
I worked with someone whose brother was hung up in Asia for drug trafficking - do I condone the trafficking or the hanging ? Neither
Yet the sadness of the surviving sibling was palpable

I cannot hope to change a country’s approach - including the USA and Qatar who Trek right (or left in sum States but not the sun state of florida) on drugs and women’s rights

Of course you gotta get to the UK somehow or how otherwise do you visit Lords ? ?
And I don’t mean the non-stop PER-LHR at 120% of ‘normal’ price

 

[justinbrett]

Thought we were talking about Qatar! And for health reasons, a 17 hour flight would be the end of me.

The comment I was replying to was about BA moving its Australian services to DOH instead of SIN to integrate with QR (exactly what QF did with EK at DXB). Hence why I predicted the same eventual failure.

 

[justinbrett]

I may not use it, but given 'AFR' says some sources indicate that allowing QR extra traffic rights would see return airfares drop by up to A$1000 to Europe ('AFR' didn't say 'economy' or 'business' but I assume it meant Y), it'd also be great to see TK flying in and out of MEL (and in time, SYD). The sooner the better!

That is laughable!

QR is already not the cheapest - why would adding a single service to each of the major ports cause the fares to halve? As for J, they are among the most expensive carriers.

I chose random dates (tuesdays only - cheapest flights) for SYD-LHR in Mar 24. This is what I got. QR is way down the list, even QF are cheaper.

 

[levelnine]

Excellent piece by Joe Aston in the AFR today. If you have access, the full article is well worth reading. As he usefully highlights, Qantas has played the 'human rights' card before in its battle against its Middle Eastern competitors. The first few paragraphs:

As millions of Australians know and feel acutely, airfares today stand at record highs. Indeed, they are a key input of our rampant consumer price inflation. The national carrier, Qantas, is (happily for them) unable to sustain pre-COVID international capacity until FY25 due to a lack of available aircraft. In the meantime, it’s printing super-profit margins on its international flights (and domestic flights for that matter).

Yet, the Albanese government has just refused the application of Qatar Airways to operate 28 new flights each week between Doha and Sydney/Melbourne.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese with Qantas CEO Alan Joyce at the airline’s 100th gala dinner in March. Getty

The NSW and Victorian governments supported Qatar’s new flights, as did the federal opposition, Trade Minister Don Farrell, the airports, travel agents and tourism bodies. To say nothing of Australian consumers, whose interests are of no interest to government ministers in the thrall of the Qantas influence machine.

In yet another flawless turn of luck for Qantas, the government appears to have quite cynically conflated Qatar Airways’ air rights with an incident three years ago at Doha Airport when five Australian women were forced to undergo grossly invasive searches by Qatari police.

Nobody is minimising that abomination, which is now the subject of a class action, but since when does the misconduct of police have any place in the consideration of market access for an airline? Presumably since it became the only pretence the government could contrive of.

What should have been taken into account by the Australian government is that Qatar Airways was one of only two airlines (the other was US carrier United) to maintain uninterrupted flights to Australia throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, repatriating tens of thousands of Australians through 2020 and 2021, long after Qantas had packed up and gone home. Throughout that period, of course, Qantas ensured the news cameras were always rolling on its occasional “rescue flights”, all paid for by the Department of Foreign Affairs.

Since its invention as a public company, Qantas has been a skilled prosecutor of whispering campaigns against its enemies foreign and domestic. It is the dirtiest player in the game. In Canberra, Qantas was briefing MPs on human rights abuses in the United Arab Emirates right up to the moment it jumped into bed with Emirates and started flying to Dubai itself.

What wouldn’t Anthony Albanese do for Qantas?

Since its invention as a public company, Qantas has been a skilled prosecutor of whispering campaigns against its enemies foreign and domestic.

www.afr.com

 

[Pushka]

Excellent piece by Joe Aston in the AFR today. If you have access, the full article is well worth reading. As he usefully highlights, Qantas has played the 'human rights' card before in its battle against its Middle Eastern competitors. The first few paragraphs:

What wouldn’t Anthony Albanese do for Qantas?

Since its invention as a public company, Qantas has been a skilled prosecutor of whispering campaigns against its enemies foreign and domestic.

www.afr.com

It always surprised me given all this that Qantas tied in with Emirates years ago. When it suits I guess.

 

[siri]

It always surprised me given all this that Qantas tied in with Emirates years ago. When it suits I guess.

Such a great piece on afr.com
Frankly, petro-dictators who keep the equity in their airlines in exchange for the sovereign backing they provide are far smarter than successive Australian governments, which get bled by Qantas for $2.7 billion of subsidies and every other kind of regulatory favour but then watch on as private shareholders enjoy the record profits. Qantas gets away with this formidable heist by handing out a few lousy Chairman’s Lounge memberships and upgrades for politicians’ idiot children.
This year, Cass-Gottlieb requested funding from the government to continue that reporting, given “a lack of effective competition... has resulted in higher airfares and poorer service”. King refused that funding and the ACCC was forced to cease its monitoring in June.
Minister King is an embarrassment, but that’s not news. Her decisions have all the hallmarks of Albanese himself. The prime minister who was going to change the way politics operates in this country is really the ultimate insider, a 30-year veteran of smoky back rooms.
This lounge is overrun with bewildered souls who’ve paid anywhere from $13,000 to $18,000 for the dissatisfaction, and Qantas serves them cooking wine.

 

[levelnine]

This lounge is overrun with bewildered souls who’ve paid anywhere from $13,000 to $18,000 for the dissatisfaction, and Qantas serves them cooking wine.

I did get a good chuckle out of that line.

 

[RooFlyer]

I did get a good chuckle out of that line.

The whole para is a zinger!

In the Qantas lounge at Heathrow earlier this month, there were sadly no special mezze plates. The provenance of the wines on offer there cannot be pinpointed to a single growing region or even state, described imprecisely as products of “South Eastern Australia”. The Berri Estates unoaked chardonnay, produced in vats the size of Olympic Dam, was one, which I found available online at $5.90 per bottle. Just imagine the wholesale price. This lounge is overrun with bewildered souls who’ve paid anywhere from $13,000 to $18,000 for the dissatisfaction, and Qantas serves them cooking wine.

 

[RooFlyer]

I chose random dates (tuesdays only - cheapest flights) for SYD-LHR in Mar 24. This is what I got. QR is way down the list, even QF are cheaper.

I get the point being made, but the flights you found are far from equal. The cheapies have long connection times and overall journey times - 54-37 hours!

The flights with what I'd call reasonable journey times - 24-27 hours - are all within $240 of each other and if you exclude the QF outlier 'direct' at the bottom, within $60 of each other (rounded); so QR being 'well down the list' isn't really telling us anything other than its pretty much 'in line' with the premium carriers.

 

[justinbrett]

I get the point being made, but the flights you found are far from equal. The cheapies have long connection times and overall journey times - 54-37 hours!

The flights with what I'd call reasonable journey times - 24-27 hours - are all within $240 of each other and if you exclude the QF outlier 'direct' at the bottom, within $60 of each other (rounded); so QR being 'well down the list' isn't really telling us anything other than its pretty much 'in line' with the premium carriers.

The point is QR are not competing on price now, and to say adding a single flight to each airport is going to halve the fare is just ludicrous.

SQ have 4 flights a day and a lot of the market share and they weren't even in that price grouping ($2318 return for those dates).

 

[CaptJCool]

It always surprised me given all this that Qantas tied in with Emirates years ago. When it suits I guess.

And it went on
Any person being honest with themselves, incidentally, knows very well that the global aviation supply chain is chock-full of human misery. Do you think any of the South Asian migrant workers conducting heavy maintenance on Qantas A380s in Abu Dhabi are counting down the days until their paid parental leave?

At a Labor Party fundraiser in Brisbane in May, Anthony Albanese told donors that the Qantas-Emirates alliance was one of his proudest achievements as transport minister in the Rudd and Gillard governments. A revealing boast, indeed.

Something about a 30 year veteran of smoky back rooms

To wist to add
Caucus binds everyone to the one outcome. There’s no room once the majority prevail for any dissent
They had anti-protest laws a century ago way before Archer fired her arrows across bows of the Spirit of Tasmania !

 

[PERLHR]

The point is QR are not competing on price now, and to say adding a single flight to each airport is going to halve the fare is just ludicrous.

SQ have 4 flights a day and a lot of the market share and they weren't even in that price grouping ($2318 return for those dates).

We all know that fares from Australia are expensive. Yes QR have moments of expensive fares subject to demand I should imagine. However it's not all one way traffic out ofAustralia. Reverse it. Fly from European destinations (not UK) into Australia and see the differences that can occur.

 

[justinbrett]

We all know that fares from Australia are expensive. Yes QR have moments of expensive fares subject to demand I should imagine. However it's not all one way traffic out ofAustralia. Reverse it. Fly from European destinations (not UK) into Australia and see the differences that can occur.

Not sure what your point is. Similar result in ranking (QR usually not the cheapest), and all the cities I searched for are more than SYD-LHR on the same dates (which makes sense, as the most competition is to LHR). I did a max 30 hour filter to keep @RooFlyer happy.

All of this seems to be missing the point that adding a few QR flights is not going to make a drastic difference in fares. It might - might - have a slight difference but nothing like the $1000 claim above.

Paris:

Berlin:

Barcelona:

Rome:

 

[drron]

The point is QR are not competing on price now, and to say adding a single flight to each airport is going to halve the fare is just ludicrous.

SQ have 4 flights a day and a lot of the market share and they weren't even in that price grouping ($2318 return for those dates).

You are forgetting the law of supply and demand. read the AFR piece carefully. It makes the point that we are struggling to get back to pre covid passenger numbers because there are not enough seats. Even 2 wide bodies a day would bring down the pent up demand leading to at least some pressure on all the other airlines operating to Europe. And for 2 extra flights per day they would go from 28 flights per week to 42. A 50% increase in seats. That would obviously give QR to reduce it's fares and significantly increase it's share of a lucrative market.

As well note that EK plus QF have 52% of the market between Australia and Europe. I would say probably the 2 airlines QR would want to target.

And as for QF not being behind calling in favours from this government there is this from the article.

"Any person being honest with themselves, incidentally, knows very well that the global aviation supply chain is chock-full of human misery. Do you think any of the South Asian migrant workers conducting heavy maintenance on Qantas A380s in Abu Dhabi are counting down the days until their paid parental leave?

At a Labor Party fundraiser in Brisbane in May, Anthony Albanese told donors that the Qantas-Emirates alliance was one of his proudest achievements as transport minister in the Rudd and Gillard governments. A revealing boast, indeed."

And for articles in that publication the 12ft website lets you get behind their paywall.

 

[RooFlyer]

All of this seems to be missing the point that adding a few QR flights is not going to make a drastic difference in fares. It might - might - have a slight difference but nothing like the $1000 claim above.

agree that it’s not going to make a drastic difference in fares – overnight or of the magnitude quoted. But unless the whole supply and demand theory is wrong, then additional capacity will put downward pressure on airfares.

And of course your numbers help dispel the myths ( not by you here) that QR is state subsidised and is competing unfairly. it’s broadly priced along with its peers but offers a very very good product for that price.

 

[justinbrett]

You are forgetting the law of supply and demand. read the AFR piece carefully. It makes the point that we are struggling to get back to pre covid passenger numbers because there are not enough seats. Even 2 wide bodies a day would bring down the pent up demand leading to at least some pressure on all the other airlines operating to Europe. And for 2 extra flights per day they would go from 28 flights per week to 42. A 50% increase in seats. That would obviously give QR to reduce it's fares and significantly increase it's share of a lucrative market.

As well note that EK plus QF have 52% of the market between Australia and Europe. I would say probably the 2 airlines QR would want to target.

And as for QF not being behind calling in favours from this government there is this from the article.

"Any person being honest with themselves, incidentally, knows very well that the global aviation supply chain is chock-full of human misery. Do you think any of the South Asian migrant workers conducting heavy maintenance on Qantas A380s in Abu Dhabi are counting down the days until their paid parental leave?

At a Labor Party fundraiser in Brisbane in May, Anthony Albanese told donors that the Qantas-Emirates alliance was one of his proudest achievements as transport minister in the Rudd and Gillard governments. A revealing boast, indeed."

And for articles in that publication the 12ft website lets you get behind their paywall.

It's a 50% increase in QR seats, not total seats. As stated, SQ already has four flights a day, granted not everyone goes to Europe, but then not everyone flying QR goes to Europe either. It would be, at best, an extra 5% addition to the market.

More likely, QR would rely on their ability to serve more connections than the Asian carriers, so can add that 5% without reducing fares, as they can compete on their brand, network, and fact they start from a small market share.

So sure, total fares might come down $50 or so, but nothing in the order of $1000 as was suggested upthread.

In fact, if QR's addition was to cause fares to plumet below 1K, I would argue that's not sustainable and would eventually lead to a reduction of competition. It won't though, SQ already have 4x daily flights and are charging more than most.

 

[drron]

It's a 50% increase in QR seats, not total seats. As stated, SQ already has four flights a day, granted not everyone goes to Europe, but then not everyone flying QR goes to Europe either. It would be, at best, an extra 5% addition to the market.

More likely, QR would rely on their ability to serve more connections than the Asian carriers, so can add that 5% without reducing fares, as they can compete on their brand, network, and fact they start from a small market share.

So sure, total fares might come down $50 or so, but nothing in the order of $1000 as was suggested upthread.

In fact, if QR's addition was to cause fares to plumet below 1K, I would argue that's not sustainable and would eventually lead to a reduction of competition. It won't though, SQ already have 4x daily flights and are charging more than most.

And QR has 21.5% of the market between Australia and Europe. upping supply by 10% in this market is likely to see a price reduction and in premium cabins by more than $50. And that is important for a fair few AFFers.

 

[justinbrett]

And QR has 21.5% of the market between Australia and Europe. upping supply by 10% in this market is likely to see a price reduction and in premium cabins by more than $50. And that is important for a fair few AFFers.

Where are you getting these market share stats from?

What's SQ's market share?
Edit - I have found the source on ACCC's website. AFR have selectively quoted and used Jan-May 22 stats (the QF/EK application referred to 2019 stats within the application).

Also the biggest caveat here - this data is based on marketing carrier - so QF is inevitably overrepresented with its many European codeshares (AF, KL, LH).

It's unclear whether Australia/Europe is inclusive or exclusive of UK/Ireland. The ones broken down by business & leisure are exclusive of UK/Ireland.

For 2019:
UK, QF/EK has 39.8%, QR has 10.7%.
Europe, QF/EK has 33.7%, QR has 21.5%.

2022 Jan-May:
UK, QF/EK has 51.6%, QR has 13.2%
Europe, QF/EK has 36.9%, QR has 21.5%

It looks to me that Europe excludes UK/Ireland