Tuesday, February 21, 2006

That Bird has Flown

Well, the airfare wars have ended disappointingly here in Oz. The government subsidized airline, Qantas, maintained near-monopoly on their trans-pacific route in which each and everyone of our dear loved ones have flown on to visit us (Sorry Thomas).

Singapore Airlines made a strong bid to try and gain access to this route, citing fair trade, increased tourism and open competition as being perfectly viable reasons. Yet, given that the LA to Sydney route accounts for nearly 40% of Qantas profits and has roughly 40,000 jobs at stake in Australia, no dice. Admist somewhat racial overtones, the government said 'hells naw'. They've opened up the route to Canada Air (which is just a rebadging of the existing United routes) and have mentioned that Virgin Blue may get consideration in 2007. Do you see a trend here, especially since Air Emirates also wanted a cut? Meanwhile, prices will stay as high as ever.

Funniest part about it, (funny in a sadistic, I have no more money kind of way) the government official who took undoubtedly a tidy little bribe from Qantas and the union of aircraft mechanics, stated after the announcement, "perhaps Singapore Air and Qantas could merge to alleviate this conflict". What??? Both airlines looked surprisingly at each other and said that there was never any merger plans even remotely in the works. It's like saying because Iran and Israel cannot agree on an issue, perhaps they should just merge to solve it.

Qantas has promised further discounts on this route, but we'll believe it when we see it. We're United folks anyhoo, but were hoping that the increased competition would have helped our commute costs somewhat.

Buggah!

posted by ncawthon at 11:01 PM