[AMcWhirter]

Readers may be aware that I am fascinated by both ASAs (air services agreements) and aeropolitics.

This evening’s Guardian is reporting on how Qatar Airways is circumventing its nation’s ASA with Australia.

Under the current ASA Qatar Airways is limited to 28 weekly flights to four cities: Melbourne, Sydney Brisbane and Perth.

But here’s the interesting part.

There is *no limit* placed on the number of flights which can be operated to a *non-major city*, such as Adelaide, provided that city is operated as a destination and departure point.

So Qatar Airways is able to increase its services to Melbourne simply by routing extra flights to and from Adelaide (with an en route stop in Australia).

The Guardian reports that this loophole allowed Qatar Airways to introduce a second, daily non-stop Doha-Melbourne flight in November 2022 “but with Adelaide registered as its destination and departure point in Australia.”

Of course these ‘ghost’ flights do not appear on Qatarairways.com (because seats are unavailable for sale).

But when checking Flightaware.com they are displayed.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/aug/09/ghost-flights-qatar-airways-flying-near-empty-planes-in-australia-to-exploit-legal-loophole

[cwoodward]

I stand to be corrected re the detail Alex but I read a piece last week that the AU government had refused the airline the extra 28 flights per week that it was seeking which included flights to second level cities that you mention. I am not sure if this includes routes that were already being flown awaiting government approval or not. The decision is being appealed but was bought the artical mentioned at the behest of Qantas. Interestingly bothe airlines are OneWorld members !

[AMcWhirter]

Thanks for the update cwoodward.

This report is news to us here in the UK. And it came from the Guardian’s Australian office.

Am sure that the regulators will be meeting at some stage to negotiate a new Qatar-Australia ASA.

Originally the new PM was thought he wanted to encourage more air services to Australia.

But in the cold light of day, plus some lobbying from Qantas, it seems he may now have changed his mind !

[cwoodward]

This piece from reliable ch-aviation has accurate details Alex

https://www.ch-aviation.com/portal/news/129982-canberra-says-no-to-more-qatar-airways-flights

1 user thanked author for this post.

AMcWhirter

[lostantipod]

The “right” approach to the whole Qatar/Australia issue is impenetrable to me, and the recent rejection of their request for 22 more flights a week adds to my confusion.

On the one hand, QR maintained links to Oz during covid when most airlines would not, which helped a lot of Aussies, and their treatment of my existing pre-covid booking, and later new booking, cancellations was exemplary – unlike many other major carriers. They did and do offer a range of Oz destinations when others don’t fly there at all, or limp in to Sydney only (hi BA). Tourism is one of the countries biggest industries so why not , when post-covid volumes are not yet back to their peak, encourage it? And QF has been a shoddy citizen since Joyce took over – they’ve gone from a young fleet to one of the oldest, have an atrocious call centre , and unreliable services to/from LHR (let alone elsewhere, I’m only speaking from experience), pax can’t spend their covid credits (let alone get any refund), and QF took massive govt handouts during covid and now trumpets return to profit as if that never kept them afloat in the first place – they deserve to feel the flames of competition. Meanwhile QR generally offer a far superior onboard experience and modem fleet.

But….

While nobody like s a cheat (re original topic) Readers here may not be familiar with the lawsuit from Australian women who were forced to disembark in DOH and undergo a forced intimate examination if they wanted to continue to Australia , because elsewhere in the airport an abandoned newborn was found in the lavatories; Qatar (the airline and govt) deny any wrongdoing…there are diplomatic ramifications to this, of course.
As far as service goes, my last QR flight to Oz subjected me to a mechanical breakdown and the ensuing customer service and 32 hour delay was as bad if not worse than anything QF throws up, so replacing one with the other is no guarantee of a better customer experience. And while QF is happy to suck the government teat, I don’t doubt that’s peanuts compared to what QR enjoys, so maybe QF deserve protecting; meanwhile Qatar as a country will have a coherent long term investment strategy of some sort that includes the airline….Australian governments and businesses struggle with that, so why deny QR flights as a figleaf to Aussie failure to act? and QR won’t be the last airline asking for capacity. Turkey is investing in a similar grand hub and spoke model; the Chinese may well bounce back too – sure, there’s a national interest argument for protecting QF in the short term but only if there’s an end goal. Precedent: the only lasting result for Aussie consumers and local business from 50 years of tariff protection for the Australian car industry is…there is now no car manufacturer left there (was 5) but the high import tariffs on cars remains in place to bleed consumers dry….

In sum: I think Oz may have bought some time and made a diplomatic point, but this isn’t the end of requests like this…..

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Jacob, cwoodward

[cwoodward]

Qantas was a government owned airline
Those strings have never been completely severed
Qantas is an Australian icon and although they may complain about it best not ever criticise the airline to an Australian -they will,in my experience bite back hard.
In short Qantas has the ear of the Government and I don’t see that changing.

3 users thanked author for this post.

theflyingnurse, DerekVH, AMcWhirter

[lostantipod]

I am Australian. Aussies are not happy with Qantas and even more fed up with shody service from their low-cost little brother, Jetstar.
Check out the Travellers Letters of the Sydney Morning Herald, or better still from a hard numbers perspective rather than the rants of the indignant once a year tourist, see Joe Aston’s columns in the Australian Financial Review.
I simply cant decide if Qantas is worth defending from capacity requests like QRs… never mind the last few years of shoddy service, Joyce has run the fleet into the ground from an age perspective, and hasnt built the reserves for near term renewal or expansion. It actually impacts the economy.

[BrotherJim]

Is it exploitation when all they are doing is what is allowed for under the air agreement? And this is nothing new, Qatar used to operate DOH-SYD-CBR-SYD-DOH for much the same reason. With a 777 flying to Canberra with maybe 30 pax on board, sitting in Canberra for 4 or 5 hours before heading back with another 30 pax. Now having flown that a few times it was certainly an improvement over a Qantas dash-8, but clear as day that unlike SQ who also flew to Canberra, Qatar was only interested in the extra flight to Sydney and would have been happy to fly empty, wheras SQ was trying to service the Canberra market.

As for the complaints about their lack of additional rights (noting they DID gain an extra 7 flights) and that being to protect Qantas, whilst it is easy to pick on Qantas like BA gets picked on in the UK by Brits, fact of the matter is air rights are a little more complex than just protecting home airlines. Air travel is healthy when there is lots of competition, however if one carrier has far too much of it and can seat dump to lessen that competition then that is bad for everyone. So by limiting Qatar, they are also protecting other competing airlines such as Etihad, Emirates, Cathay, Singapore, Thai etc all whom share the market with Qantas. And frankly the whole argument about protecting only Qantas is somewhat silly when the market Qatar competes against with Qantas is basically Europe and Qantas only has two flights to LHR and season flights to Rome anyway.

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cwoodward

[cwoodward]

Although I largely agree with your post ‘Brother Jim’ I don’t believe that many here are ‘picking on Qantas’ as such.

Protectionism has long been the the name of the game in the airline industry emanating perhaps from a time when most major airlines were government owned.
Over the years Cathay has fought hard to protect its patch and the same criticisms were leveled at it when it fought to see-off the Qantas group from its patch .
Also then government owned BA and the British government fought long and hard when it played dirty tricks for some many years to prevent Cathay from flying the Hong Kong to London route. If I recall correctly it was a House of Lords intervention and a high court appeal that finally forced the issue) Another privateer (much loved) British Caledonian also benefited enormously from the court decision and fares on the route halved on the route overnight and traffic on the route grew hugely almost overnight.

Personally I believe that although far from perfect the present licencing systems if well administered are in general are much preferable than would be some sort of unregulated free-for-all.

[Author]

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