Tiger begins service to Canberra

I’ve recently learned that Qantas has lost the Defence contract – on its own enough to keep any airline airborne through turbulence (pun).

It’ll definetly solidify the competitors position in Canberra though, as the closest airport to wherever the JDFHQ is located, which is ultimately a good thing for Canberra.

Although Quaintarse is obviously ripping people off, I would no more fly Jetstar than get on that Ukrainian IL76 featured elsewhere on this site. When you rely on people’s misfortunes and unexpected delays to generate a significant percentage of your revenue, some of which Qantas snaffles up when Jetstar stuffs up, then you will never ever see my bum on what of your seats.

Not only that, Jetstar is turning air travel into a favourite of the bogan masses, and I prefer to pay a little more and fly in better company. 🙂

You get what you pay for…

Having seen the various subterfuges that senior APS people use to avoid flying anyone but Qantas, it’ll be interesting to see if the gov’t can make its desire for them to use non-Qantas have any real impact.

I must admit, when I fly elsewhere (okay, usually to Melbourne), I usually fly Virgin anyway on the basis that it’s significantly cheaper than Qantas. (and, having driven to Melbourne once, I’ve realised that an hour or so in the air beats spending the better half of a day on the road)

Given that Tiger does $10 airfare sales on a reasonably regular basis, that’s very likely to be a daily planeload of people who might consider a trip to Canberra just a bit more attractive now…

We received an all staff message when Vigin started earlier this year which also mentioned, “The Department of Finance and Administration has re-introduced Commonwealth smaller airline usage reporting and has set a 25% benchmark for smaller airline usage for all departments. This new benchmark is a significant increase when compared to the previous 10% target.”

Baby steps people 🙂

In our relatively small market, unless the APS embraces a carrier other than Qantas we should expect any competition to be flying to Canberra on a temporary basis.

@Hingo. Does being owned by Qantas have anything to do with Jetstar not servicing super profitable/protected routes?!

Try booking a J or V flight somewhere and then needing to change your return, or not return the same route. This is why some of us prefer a Qantas flexible ticket. Not just pollies.

“That’s because all the pollies want their free snacks at the qantas lounge! I say give them a gold coin for the vending machine!”

You can still access the Qantas Club when flying Jetstar