Qantas’ Rob Gurney says campaigns with Tourism Australia working well

Qantas Executive General Manager Sales and Distribution Rob Gurney confirmed today that the marketing work they are undertaking with Tourism Australia is working well and converting into bookings.

He also confirmed while the Australian Airlines is ceasing operating the AA brand, it will be retained within QF, adding that Qantas international services account for about one third of international flights out of Aus and the airline is continuing to increase service and routes with the announcement today of an extension of seasonal services between Sydney and Vancouver to cater for the North American ski season after enjoying strong forward bookings for seasonal services between June and August.

Mr Gurney said that Japan Air Lines joining oneworld was also considered to be very significant, substantially strengthening the alliance capacity in that region.

Mr Gurney referred to the recent news of A380 delivery delays commenting in an exclusive interview that it is early days and of course we are talking with Airbus about all this.

When asked if Qantas would consider cancelling its orders for the A380, opting instead for the new extended version of the 747 being produced by Boeing, Mr Gurney would not comment, except to say that Qantas is close to Boeing, they are a good partner and we have just ordered a very significant number of aircraft from them, but it would be totally premature to comment on any aspect of this situation.

When asked about the comments made recently by the airline’s GM for New Zealand that Qantas had a reported “Plan B” up it sleeve with regard to the Tasman Agreement, should the alliance with Air New Zealand be unsuccessful, he commented that he believed that Qantas has a strong case and the alliance is critical but it was too premature to say.   

He added that Qantas would not have taken it on if they did not think that they had a strong case, commenting also that the comments made by his New Zealand colleague may have been taken out of context.  

Mr Gurney said that the bringing on line of the 12 Boeing 787’s with a network footprint of 24%, as the airline worked forward might mean some fine tuning, but he said that they also needed to digest that additional capacity the A380 will bring, when they come on line.   It will also be few months before we can release details of the A380 product as we have some exciting innovations which we do not want to release to our competition.  

Regarding which routes Jetstar and Qantas will operate together on, he said that Qantas and Jetstar will operate on overlapping routes, which will be determined by the application of the group’s market segmentation viability business model and the suitability of each operation for specific markets and routes.  

Report by John Alwyn-Jones at ATE 2006