Fiji Airways, Executive Manager Strategy, Networks and Alliances, John Checketts at CAPA Australia Pacific Aviation Summit 2022
John Checketts joined Fiji Airways in October 2018 as Executive Manager of Network Planning & Strategy; and in 2022 also assumed responsibility of Airline Partnerships. John has nearly twenty years of experience in the airline sector, focused primarily on strategy, network and fleet development and profitability optimization. Prior to joining Fiji Airways, John spent nearly 15 years at JetBlue based in New York with experience in Revenue Management, Finance/FP&A, and the majority of his time in Strategy where he served as VP Network Planning.
Transcript
John Checketts:It's exceeded expectations across the board. We came into the recovery not sure if we'd be able to get back up to pre-COVID levels in Australia, capacity levels, for 12 to 18 months, and we're over 100% and have been over 100% of pre-COVID capacity for a few months already. We've reopened Adelaide that we hadn't flown since July of 2019, well before the pandemic, and our load factors are strong. We have flights that are selling out, and it's been well beyond our expectations. So Nandi and Fiji Airways primarily is serving tourism into Fiji and bringing Fijians back home to Fiji to visit family and Fijians to visit family abroad. But one important travel segment that we have is the transit And that goes within the South Pacific, taking people home to visit family in Samoa and Tonga and the other Pacific nations, as well as using Fiji as a hub for transiting in the transpacific market from Australia to North America and vice versa. And it's been a very important part of our recovery efforts as well. You know, people, they want a high-end luxury vacation to Fiji, and that starts It starts at time of boarding their aircraft. So a new airplane, our A350s are the best product, I think, in the transpacific space, from our J-Class business class to our economy, the new seats, the new feel. And then from an operations perspective, our 737s, our A350s, they're lower cost than the alternatives on an operating cost basis, and it's been important financially and as we build demand. I think I think Vancouver has a lot of variables that work favourably with Fiji. First, it's a large city with strong income levels. Seasonally, it gets cold in the northern winter and people want to travel to nice warm beach destinations. Conversely, from that transit space using Nandi as a hub, there's a strong ski connection between Australia, New Zealand, and Vancouver. So in the northern winter, you have a lot of people travelling north to go ski, and in the summer, Northern summer, you have Vancouver folks coming down to Australia and New Zealand as well. And then lastly, an important variable with Vancouver is the strong Pacific Islander, specifically Fiji community that lives in that area. So we have strong tourism, we have strong VFR, and we also have a strong connection and transit components in the market.
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