Weasel words
September 13th, 2010 at 11:10 am by David FarrarAAP reports:
Sir Richard Branson, the founder of Virgin Blue, has come out strongly against the decision not to allow the airline to enter an alliance with Air New Zealand on trans-Tasman routes.
Sir Richard said he wanted to compete on a level playing field but the competition regulator wasn’t making business easy.
No you didn’t want to compete. You wanted to stop competing with Air NZ – the exact opposite to competing.
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September 13th, 2010 at 11:38 am
It is hard to see how any alliance agreement would increase competition but I don’t think it is fair to accuse Richard Branson of not wanting to compete. I think he has a strong record of setting up businesses that drive down prices and offer consumers more choice.
You have to wonder who makes money in the aviation industry. The airports hike prices because they have a monopoly position and leave the airlines all the hard work of marketing and selling their services. Why does it cost $70 to leave your car at CHCH airport for a few days?
And on some routes it can cost almost as much for the taxi ride to the airport as the actual flight, Dunedin airport to the City is a $65 cab fare.
Vote:September 13th, 2010 at 11:39 am
Whether or not Branson was being duplicitous, the fact remains that AirNZ (and other airlines) have had an extremely poor run with trying to get anything approved by the ACCC. I cannot believe that this is solely to do with competition, or lack thereof. Qantas seems to be able to JV with whomever they see fit, yet every other airline gets blocked.
The cynic in me, would suggest that to work at the ACCC, one must have shares in Qantas……
Vote:September 13th, 2010 at 11:42 am
Oh what nonsense. Anyone would think Air New Zealand and Virgin were the only airlines operating on the route.
Vote:September 13th, 2010 at 11:44 am
@mattyroo – You beat me to it. The ACCC / Qantas relationship appears quite cosy.
Vote:September 13th, 2010 at 12:18 pm
oops. Looks like Richard Branson is taking lines from his war with British Airways twenty years ago – back when he was the small fish and actually did want to compete. Those lines worked great when they were true.
Vote:September 13th, 2010 at 12:30 pm
@YesWeDid it’s more like $80 into the city from Dunedin airport.
Actually brings up an interesting point though – you say it’s more than airfares. That’s only true if you book the fares months in advance – the DUD-WLG route is ridiculously expensive if you’re not booking months out. Pacfic Blue (which of course is gone now) meant the prices for DUD-AKL were kept at a far more reasonable level, even just a week or two before the flight.
Currently the only international routes Dunedin has are to Brisbane. Air NZ flies twice weekly, and Pac Blue is moving up to 6 or 7. If we want to fly to Sydney or Melbourne then we have to add another $120 at least to go via Chch. If this alliance did happen I’d be interested to see if we started getting some more choice – surely with 8-9 flights per week to Brisbane there’d be demand for a couple to Sydney?
Vote:September 13th, 2010 at 12:33 pm
mattyroo, Adolf F and krazykiwi hit the nail on the head – this is all about protecting Quantas’ market share.
Vote:September 13th, 2010 at 1:35 pm
Quantas. An adequate airline with adequate staff, and adequate planes, and adequate services.
Vote:September 13th, 2010 at 1:41 pm
@Guy – you’re missing a few ‘in’ prefixes IMO
Vote:September 13th, 2010 at 3:12 pm
Nah GF: Quantas – The lucky airline, lucky if the plane lands intact!
Vote:September 13th, 2010 at 3:25 pm
@Bevan – That makes Qantas luckier than AirNZ (sadly). I once had close to 2 million frequent flyer points with Qantas. That was when their aircraft were class leading in terms of comfort, facilities etc. No any more. Recently had a business class seat on an internal Qantas flight in Oz. The seat quality and service was unchanged in the 10 years since I last traveled on the same fare/route.
It’s been interesting to watch the widespread demise of former or currently state-owned airlines, and the rise of publicly or privately owned airlines. Sure there are failures there too, but 30 years ago the suggestion that a Branson could achieve he has today would have been scoffed at.
We should be proud of AirNZ. They have done an amazing job to thrive from a small corner at the bottom of a world that’s enduring a financial crisis.
Vote:September 13th, 2010 at 3:25 pm
Bevan, the lucky airline has never had a jet hull loss.
Vote:September 13th, 2010 at 3:30 pm
I have no particular brief for Qantas (note, no “u” in its name), but if you are going to smear an airline, at least do so with some basis of fact. Despite a few maintenance problems last year, their safety record is right up there with the best. See http://www.planecrashinfo.com/rates.htm
Vote:September 13th, 2010 at 3:38 pm
Well said Brian Harmer.
Give me Qantas over Air NZ any day of the week.
Vote:September 13th, 2010 at 4:40 pm
I have no issue with Qantas’ safety record, it’s their record of (domestic) flights being cancelled or deferred that caused me to vow never to book them again. Once was forgiveable, twice was a reminder there were other alternatives, and the third episode was a reminder that Qantas shouldn’t be one of the alternatives (should have been home by 7.30pm in time to say goodnight to my kids, ended up getting in about 11pm).
Vote:September 13th, 2010 at 4:42 pm
Fot, how often do you fly? A decade ago I would have agreed with you, but not today.
Vote:September 13th, 2010 at 5:25 pm
Barring loyalty rewards I’m buggered if I can see any reason for not using the airline that will get me where I want to go, when I want to go as cheap as possible except for the outfits that demand I cut my feet off before entering their seats.
Vote:September 13th, 2010 at 5:38 pm
As someone whom travels EXTENSIVELY, on both AirNZ and Qantas in business class, Qantas is shite, with a capital S. Their business product is so far behind the times that it is hard to find another leading airline (outside the US) that has a product that crap. Admittedly Qantas’ A380 product is far superior to everything else in their fleet, but they only use that on routes that I can travel on either AirNZ or Singapore, so why would I go out of my way to use it?
Now onto the fallacy that Qantas is a safer airline and have never lost a hull….. The plane that Qantas parked on the Bangkok golf course a few years ago was a write-off, however, Qantas elected to repair it, just to retain their Zero-Hull-Loss record. Nevermind all the problems they have had of the last couple of years.
Fot obviously doesn’t travel much and obviously not with class leading carriers, otherwise you wouldn’t make such an outlandishly stupid statement. As KK correctly points out, 10 years ago that may have been true, but it has not been true for at least the past 5 or so. I used to regularly fly the AKL/LAX leg in the old AirNZ first class, which was undeniably crap, I reckoned 4 seats in economy was more comfortable and cheaper! Things have certainly changed for the better, both in terms of product and delivery.
The only thing Qantas has over AirNZ, in my opinion, is their frequent flyer program, whilst it is far from great, it is far better than the rip-off that is the AirNZ program. And when you spend the sort of money I do on flights, I think I should be damned well rewarded for my loyalty!
End threadjack!
Vote:September 13th, 2010 at 6:55 pm
Why should anyone be at all surprised? The essence of a business in a free market model is to eliminate competition, not increase it.
Vote:September 13th, 2010 at 11:45 pm
Agree with everything mattyroo says. As well as flying up front for a crust I’m a FF with Garuda, Qantas and Singapore Airlines and fly domestically exclusively with Air NZ when I am home.
Qantas are atrocious and I have booked with them for one last trip to see if they have made any efforts to act like a proper airline. Based on my last experience with them I would rate Garuda far more highly for service and almost on par for ‘perceived’ safety. Do not even get me started about the back-door downgrading of safety through outsourcing and the establishment of JetStar.
If you are a little interested in actual aviation reporting as opposed to the rubbish that is served up by nearly all journalists it would pay to read the Crikey blog Plane Talking [http://blogs.crikey.com.au/planetalking/].
Vote:September 14th, 2010 at 12:03 am
The Australian Commission for the protection of Qantas is quite happy to allow it to have a joint venture (not just a codeshare, a joint venture where all scheduling and pricing is decided by the partners) with BA; and allows it to have a cosy little codeshare with South African, the only two airlines on that route. But when Air NZ and Qantas’ only significant domestic competitor (because only DJ has a semblence of a frequent flyer programme that can possibly make some little impact on QF’s dominance of the domestic business travel market) want a codeshare on the Tasman (where, I might remind, DPF that Emirates flys three aircraft a day, including one A380), the proposal is deemed ‘anti competitive’! Air NZ cannot keep competing with all the capacity on the transtasman – something has to give and the only outcome of this will be that poorly performing thin routes, like Dunedin, will see less frequent service and possibly no competition at all.
Vote:September 14th, 2010 at 3:36 pm
And indeed Sir Richard has just pointed to that very outcome as a possibility – it makes no sense to continue trying to compete against the Qantas/Jetstar borg on the transtasman where yields are so low – Virgin will just move its planes back to mainline Australian routes. So there goes your competition.
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