QANTAS inked a new global agreement with Emirates today, which will terminate its Singapore stopover on the long-established ‘Kangaroo Route’.
Besides codesharing, Qantas will be moving its base for European flights to Dubai as part of the 10-year deal, marking the beginning of a major restructuring of flights within the airline’s network.
Emirates and Qantas will also coordinate prices, sales and scheduling, and set up a benefit-sharing model. Their frequent flyer programmes will be aligned, allowing reciprocal access to tier-status benefits such as end-to-end customer recognition, lounge access, priority check-in among other benefits. Subject to regulatory approval, the two airlines will start their partnership in April 2013.
“With European services transiting through Dubai, Qantas’ Asian services will no longer be a subsidiary of the ‘Kangaroo Route’,” said Qantas Group CEO, Alan Joyce. Qantas will launch daily A380 services from Sydney and Melbourne to London via Dubai.
He explained that Qantas’ current Asian schedule was based on travel via Asia to Europe, but Australian business customers were demanding better access to Asia.
“We will increase dedicated capacity to Singapore and retime flights to Singapore and Hong Kong to enable more ‘same day’ connections across Asia. We believe this will significantly improve the economics of our Asian operations,” said Joyce.
The Australian airline will also stop servicing the Singapore-Frankfurt route, which it said has been “underperforming”.
On the other hand, Qantas has turned out former bedfellow British Airways (BA) and will axe their joint business. Established in 1995, both cooperated closely on all BA and Qantas flights between the UK and Australia. However, the airlines are still part of the oneworld alliance and will continue to work together through bilateral codeshares.
