Australia-Asia market shake-up Pt 1: Qantas increases focus on Asia with new targeted schedules

Qantas on 04-Feb-213 announced a series of service changes for its Asian network which included retiming some routes, cancelling others while also adding frequencies, ahead of the implementation of its alliance with Emirates, due to commence on 31-Mar-2013. The focus is on a more specifically Asian strategy and it will now turn to finding Asian partners willing to provide regional connections to rival the partnership offered by Singapore Airlines (SIA) and Virgin Australia.

With the Emirates alliance, Qantas will move its hub for Kangaroo route services to London from Singapore to Emirates' Dubai base. Australia's competition authority, the ACCC, has given interim approval for the deal, with a final decision due in Mar-2013.

While Qantas is reducing seats overall, the airline claims that because about half of its existing Australia-Singapore traffic transfers to Europe (and will now instead be travelling via Dubai), it will increase the number of Qantas' seats terminating in Asia by about 40%. This will give the carrier an opportunity to compete more effectively against Asian carriers, including SIA, in the fast-growing Australia-Asia market. Qantas is now limited in its ability to compete in this high growth market because unlike its Asian competitors, its Australia-Singapore flights are not timed to facilitate same day Australia-Asia connections and because it has to allocate a significant portion of its Australia-Singapore seats to connections to Europe.