Emirates faces turbulence from Truss.
Discuss Emirates faces turbulence from Truss, on the Open Discussion forum of FrequentFlyer.com.au, the home of frequent flyers.
Welcome to Australia's leading independent Frequent Flyers resource! We hope you find the information useful and decide to join our online community. Its free to join, simply click on the register link. To start viewing messages, select the forum that you want to visit from the selection below.
Emirates faces turbulence from Truss
Steve Creedy, Aviation writer
June 19, 2006
ATTEMPTS by Dubai-based airline Emirates to get more access on key Australian routes this week may face an uphill battle in the face of hardening government support for home-grown carriers.
Transport Minister Warren Truss warned last week that the Government would protect Australian airlines and said free trade in aviation remained "a far-off goal".
Mr Truss told a conference in Canberra that the Government had reached some firm views on the importance of the Australian aviation industry. Describing Australian airlines as some of the most efficient and innovative in the world, Mr Truss said they provided more than 40,000 jobs and were among the biggest trainers and employers of skilled workers.
Interesting comment from Mr Truss. Pity the government had not "reached some firm views" and felt a little more protective of airline industry jobs back in 2001 when AN was going under.
Sponsored Links
Registered Users have the option of
removing this and all other advertisements.
More
Interesting comment from Mr Truss. Pity the government had not "reached some firm views" and felt a little more protective of airline industry jobs back in 2001 when AN was going under.
We would all be better off had the government been a little bit more protective back then and AN was still around today.
I think the stance with Emirates is the correct one. We have nothing to gain by giving them access to more routes out of Australia yet we have a lot to lose by Emirates taking additional passengers to Asia and Europe who could have possibly travelled with local carriers.
Why is air travel so special relative to just about every other industry? It is a global economy and there are very few other industries in Australia receive the level of protection that QF does. Hey perhaps we should try and experiment - open skies from MEL & maintain current bilaterals from SYD, and see who benefits the most.
Why is air travel so special relative to just about every other industry? It is a global economy and there are very few other industries in Australia receive the level of protection that QF does. Hey perhaps we should try and experiment - open skies from MEL & maintain current bilaterals from SYD, and see who benefits the most.
That would be fun to watch. I reckon all of us SYD-based people would be flying to everywhere out of MEL if that happened!
Member of: AA Exec Plat; QF LTG; PC Plat; HHonors Gold
Posts: 10,055
Re: Emirates faces turbulence from Truss
Quote:
Originally Posted by Kiwi Flyer
We do gain with EK - in the form of lower prices and competition in the product offering.
EK consistently is much cheaper than the competition, not only on trans-tasman, but also to asia and europe.
Lower prices are good for some people, but if others have to cut service levels to compete with the low labour costs of their off-shore staff, then we can start to lose out big time.
We all like to complain about the JQ model of low cost services, but if we want to have low air fares due to foreign competition, then we only have ourselves to blame for forcing the local full-service operator to reduce whatever costs they can, and if labour costs cannot be reduced then services are the only place left to reduce costs to compete.
I don't buy into the utopia of low fares due to competition. That only works to the point of forcing the operators to be more efficient. Once the low hanging fruit efficiencies have been achieved (and I believe they have with carriers like QF and NZ in our region) the only place left for cost reduction is to cut service levels. Then we all start to complain about these service level cuts. We can't have our cake (low fares) and eat it too (enjoy high standard of service) without sending labour costs off short to markets where they pay peanuts.
We do gain with EK - in the form of lower prices and competition in the product offering.
We as flyers might gain lower prices but Australia as a country gains absolutely nothing. No new tourism, no new jobs. Just plain nothing. In fact there may end being job losses if business is taken away from QF by EK.
I still tend to agree with the decision of the government to protect local airlines.
We as flyers might gain lower prices but Australia as a country gains absolutely nothing. No new tourism, no new jobs. Just plain nothing. In fact there may end being job losses if business is taken away from QF by EK.
I still tend to agree with the decision of the government to protect local airlines.
I completely disagree, a free market is a good thing. The prices on the kangaroo routes are low , I posit, because of competition. Qantas is *not* owned by the government , it is a public company that should expect to operate in a competitive market. It is possible , off peak, to get r/t fares from UK-Oz for around GBP550 ( under AUD1400 ) ; I doublt that these would exist without the competition
I completely disagree, a free market is a good thing.
I'm from the Keynesian school of economics so I have to disagree with that. There is no such thing as a "free market". They are all tainted by various forces and will not always find an equilibrium that provides a good outcome on both the supply and demand side. So some form of regulation will probably always be necessary.
The airline industry requires massive capital investment so will never support enough companies to ensure consistently low airfares and provide sufficient profits for the operators at the same time. Tight competition will lead to low fares for the short to medium term (generally at the cost of service as NM has mentioned above), but over time operators will withdraw or merge or go bust. After which fares will rise again when one or two operators establish dominance.
Emirates faces turbulence from Truss
Linear Mode
