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Aviation History
1993
1993 - 0034.PDF
Air New Zealand, with the Qantas group of airlines, should form one of the blocs with operating power across the Tasman TIES ACROSS THE TASMAN Australia and New Zealand are in the process of deregulating the routes across the sea which divides them — the Tasman. This looks as if this will lead to a domestic Australasian market, with implications for outsiders as well as the home carriers, argues Paul Phelan. A ustralia and New Zealand are di vided by the Tasman Sea, a stretch of ocean l,100nm (2,000kn) wide. The gap is beginning to look narrower, however, as Australian and New Zealand carriers shape up new strategies and tactics in the face of trans-Tasman Sea deregulation. It is an increasingly competi tive environment and yet "tying up the Tasman" is the goal of all operators in the region, and deregulation looks as if it will lead, in time, to a unified Australasian domestic market. US carriers, whose presence has main tained strong air-fare competition on the finite trans-Tasman routes, may be about to face adversaries which are contesting it from positions of fresh strength. That strength, according to the forecasts of Australasian operators, will come from increased polari sation through commercial and equity alli ances into two competing blocs. In what is probably the most popular scenario, Air New Zealand and the Qantas group, with their strategic and commercial alliances, would form one bloc, competing with the various member airlines of the Ansett Transport Industries group and its commercial allies worldwide. Qantas, of course, has 100% ownership of Australian Airlines and it has just started on the road to privatisation with a A$665 million ($460 million) equity injection from its new partner, British Airways, which has bought a 25% holding. The ultimate identity of the Qantas group's or Ansett's new strategic shareholders will have little bearing on developments in air transport between Australia and New Zealand, say the main players, given that all carriers will have similar goals, whoever the strategists are. "I don't think there will be any major change in direction," says Qantas' corporate planning director Rodger Robertson. "The non-trade buyers take up shares to produce a return on capital, and the strategies we have today answer that. For trade buyers too, we need to make profits and pay dividends, but would also gain synergies with those companies to reduce our costs and increase our revenue share. We still have our shareholding in Air New Zealand, and anything that happens is likely to encourage relations between Qantas and Air New Zealand to improve even further." Robertson believes that ultimately there will be only two blocs with a major trans- Tasman presence. REGIONAL-TYPE APPROACH Air New Zealand chief executive Jim McCrea agrees. He says: "Any one of the three carriers left, given that four have been rationalised to three, could provide the dimensions within the market towards an outcome in which there would be two effective regional carriers with an outward- looking view. It's a single market only in as much as it starts moving more towards a 32 FLIGHT INTERNATIONAL 6 - 12 January, 1993 «
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