Over the next few weeks we will see and hear a lot about Virgin Blue taking on Qantas's corporate market share and international traffic. Virgin plans to re-vamp its domestic product and starts flights to Abu Dhabi while Qantas says its international division is "falling significantly short of where we should be".
But there is another, much publicly quieter battleground: regional flying, and today Qantas fired a warning short about keeping is turf.
As Qantas chief executive Alan Joyce said last week of Qantas's regional subsidiary, "QantasLink is the quiet achiever in the portfolio."
That is why Virgin Blue announced its own regional network, in partnership with Skywest. At the time chief executive John Borghetti emphasized the deal opening up mining flights in Western Australia (after Qantas boosted its WA mining operations), but hinted 'WA is a very small part of the jigsaw. This is also about opportunities on the east coast of Australia.''
The opportunities in eastern Australia are big--and potentially bigger than Qantas's. Preliminary analysis, sources familiar with the matter say, could see Virgin Blue's Skywest partnership operating a larger network out of Queensland than QantasLink.
That brings us to today: Qantas announced that after 29 years of flying to Queensland's Gladstone, the carrier will finally construct at the Gladstone airport a Qantas Club, seating up to 55 people, pending construction approval.
Why build a lounge after 29 years and flying 52 weekly flights? My bet is not on Qantas wanting to say thank you to its customers; QantasLink is the only carrier out of Gladstone. Instead, I see it as a pre-emptive move for QantasLink to retain its passengers. Virgin Blue's rumoured first turboprop destination?
Gladstone.
But there is another, much publicly quieter battleground: regional flying, and today Qantas fired a warning short about keeping is turf.
As Qantas chief executive Alan Joyce said last week of Qantas's regional subsidiary, "QantasLink is the quiet achiever in the portfolio."
That is why Virgin Blue announced its own regional network, in partnership with Skywest. At the time chief executive John Borghetti emphasized the deal opening up mining flights in Western Australia (after Qantas boosted its WA mining operations), but hinted 'WA is a very small part of the jigsaw. This is also about opportunities on the east coast of Australia.''
The opportunities in eastern Australia are big--and potentially bigger than Qantas's. Preliminary analysis, sources familiar with the matter say, could see Virgin Blue's Skywest partnership operating a larger network out of Queensland than QantasLink.
That brings us to today: Qantas announced that after 29 years of flying to Queensland's Gladstone, the carrier will finally construct at the Gladstone airport a Qantas Club, seating up to 55 people, pending construction approval.
Why build a lounge after 29 years and flying 52 weekly flights? My bet is not on Qantas wanting to say thank you to its customers; QantasLink is the only carrier out of Gladstone. Instead, I see it as a pre-emptive move for QantasLink to retain its passengers. Virgin Blue's rumoured first turboprop destination?
Gladstone.
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