Just when the bad news was starting to reach a mind-numbing level, along came some refreshing news, that although related to the downturn, provided the industry with a mental breath of fresh air.
The confirmation of talks between Qantas and British Airways was not the biggest surprise on record, but it did provide not only a welcome respite from all the doom and gloom, but also a potential vision of a new era in the airline industry as a result of some much needed consolidation.
But even more interesting was the news that quickly followed – that Malaysia Airlines (MAS) was in discussion with “a number of airlines” including Qantas. Already MAS has a strategic partnership with Qantas for maintenance, repair and overhaul activities.
Industry pundits give a MAS-Qantas tie-up a much better chance at succeeding than a BA-Qantas tie-up, largely based on competition grounds.
As the Centre of Asia Pacific Aviation (CAPA) notes, the MAS-Qantas linkage is a logical one but government red tape would most likely mean Qantas would at a maximum only be allowed a significant minority share.
It looks like a win-win situation according to CAPA’s analysis, with MAS gaining valuable traffic through its KL hub from Qantas’ network – which stopped flying there several years ago in favour of Singapore – while Qantas would gain a secondary hub in arch-rival’s Singapore Airlines backyard. This would provide it with an established base from which to springboard into the heart of Asia and India, CAPA notes.
It would also work nicely with the two Jetstars that operate out of Kuala Lumpur: Australian-based Jetstar and Singapore’s Qantas subsidiary, Jetstar Asia.
“In short, unlike the British Airways merger talks, this one has real legs,” says CAPA. “If it can be consummated – and it seems to have the support of MAS’ political owners in Malaysia – Southeast Asian aviation will be reshaped. And so will both Qantas/Jetstar and Malaysia Airlines. And KLIA.”
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We’re happy to announce that Payload Asia has a newly revamped website www.payloadasia. com which sports a whole new look, new features and regular news updates.
Starting from January 2009 the website will feature regular updates to its news section, which means that from this current print edition forward we will be cutting back on the number of news briefs we run in the print edition.
Your feedback has indicated that by the time many of you receive the magazine a good portion of the briefs are quite out-of-date. We hope to remedy this by migrating these online. Please bear with us as we fi netune this process and please feel free to let us know what you think.
From all of us at Payload Asia we would like to take the opportunity to wish everyone all the best in the New Year and we keep our fingers crossed that the economic storm will pass andblue skies will soon return.
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