Jetstar voted worlds best low-cost carrier

The Australian

JETSTAR will base a second aircraft in Cairns as it continues to build up the base as an international hub.

The aircraft will be used on the daily Cairns-Darwin-Singapore service currently operated by Jetstar Asia and will begin flying in February.

It will allow the airline to take domestic passengers between Cairns and Darwin, something Singapore-based Jetstar Asia was unable to do because it was considered a foreign carrier.

“It improves the economics for us on the route,” Jetstar chief executive Alan Joyce said.

“It was a profitable route and this just makes it even more so.”

The move brings to five the number of domestic markets served by Jetstar from Cairns and will see at least 12 pilot positions created in the northern Queensland city.

With 70 new cabin crew positions based in Cairns to support new international operations to Japan, including this week’s inaugural service to Nagoya, this brings total pilot and crew numbers at the hub to about 120.

Jetstar chief executive Alan Joyce said pilots on its long-haul A330 aircraft were currently based in Sydney but the airline would also look at establishing a pilot base in the town once it started operating 787 aircraft on the Japan routes and had the scale to do so.

“The pilots are based in Sydney but that’s just to give us the efficiencies because we only have six aircraft at the moment, with roughly three of them based in Sydney and three in Melbourne” Mr Joyce said.

“So we didn’t want to create a third base until we got more than six aircraft.”

Mr Joyce said he expected Cairns to expand as the dollar started to drop against the yen.

The high dollar is currently hurting the Japanese market but the airline and most analysts believe it will come down.

Jetstar is the only Australian carrier operating to Australia from western Japan. Mr Joyce said a lower dollar would make growth into the Queensland city from Japan strong.

“That would be something we would be very keen to grow with the changing economic conditions,” he said. “So if the exchange rate changes by next year when the 787s arrive, we’d be looking at adding more capacity to the Japanese market.

“But it does depend on the exchange rate.”

Jetstar faces some challenges from long-haul low-cost entrants such as Viva Macau and Malaysia-based AirAsiaX.

AirAsiaX is poised to announce its first Australian destination. Industry pundits are speculating it will be the Gold Coast, followed by Avalon in Victoria.

But Mr Joyce said he thought the fact AirAsiaX was expected to fly just one plane in the first year would make it interesting when a plane went unserviceable.

He said disruptions on international routes were different than those on shorter domestic routes.

The carrier was also still celebrating this week after being voted the world’s best low-cost carrier ahead of Air Berlin and Easyjet in the respected Skytrax awards. More than five million respondents worldwide took part in the low-cost survey. Mr Joyce said the award was a great credit to Australia.

“I’ve been working in the aviation industry in Europe for a long time and a lot of these carriers, like Easyjet and Air Berlin, have been around for while,” he said. “For a little Australian battler like Jetstar to become the world’s best low-cost carrier in a survey that’s as well respected as Skytrax is great for Australia.”