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OzJet takes off today
New all-business-class airline OzJet took to the Australian skies today.
OzJet is starting services between Australia’s two biggest cities with its Boeing 737s featuring 60 business-class seats exclusively – at economy prices.
The first OzJet flight was scheduled to leave Melbourne at 6.30am for Sydney, with the first Sydney flight to Melbourne scheduled for 8.30am.
OzJet chairman Paul Stoddart, the British-based Australian aviation and motor racing entrepreneur, was to be on board the first flights. However, OzJet is already rumoured to be looking at changes to its schedule as flight times have not proved appealing to business customers.
Mr Stoddart, the Ozjet chairman, yesterday admitted that mid-morning and mid-afternoon flights “are not proving popular at all”.
“We’ve got flights in the middle of the day next week that haven’t got a single person booked on them, so we’ll review the situation on Friday,” Mr Stoddart said.
“December and January are dead months for this market – demand falls off by about 30 per cent – which is why we’ve stuck with just the Melbourne-Sydney route, because it is one of the top 10 city pairs around the world,” he said. “The alternative was to wait until February, but we’d rather do this soft start, which allows us to be more flexible with schedules.”
From Wednesday, OzJet’s first Sydney-Melbourne flight each day will be at 6.30am.The airline has scheduled eight flights a day in each direction Monday-to-Friday, with limited services on weekends.
A special introductory offer from OzJet allows travellers to fly business class between Australia’s two major cities for just $200. The special $200 all-inclusive, one-way business-class fare is for travel on or before Sunday, December 4.
Among the passengers on this morning’s inaugural flight was Victoria’s tourism minister John Pandazopoulos, who said Ozjet’s business market focus was of great interest to the state government.
“While Victoria attracts around 27 per cent of international visitation to Australia, it accounts for around 38 per cent of business travel to Australia,” he said.
Graham Muldoon
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