Corporate Travel Analysis Reports

Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull on 13-Jan-2017 announced important changes to the management of parliamentarians' travel expenses in the wake of the resignation of Health Minister Sussan Ley after revelations of leisure and private business activities during her taxpayer-funded official trips.

Mr. Turnbull's commitment to reform of MPs' travel spending came amid revelations of other apparent misuse of travel budgets by Cabinet colleagues.

From early 2017 Air Canada and Virgin Australia introduce a tidy new partnership. Virgin Australia receives improved access to Canada - a market its existing JV partner Delta can't sufficiently cover from their shared Los Angeles gateway.

While Virgin gets access to Canada, Air Canada in turn receives access to Australia and New Zealand via Virgin's Australian east coast hub cities, which popular with Canadian tourists in their own right.

As the world awaits the British PM Theresa May's announcement of her government's official Brexit strategy, air passengers are in heaven as the British Pound falls to its lowest level in over two months against the Australian dollar. It has fallen nearly 25% since Jun-2016 as expectations that a 'hard Brexit' is now inevitable drive the GBP down against most currencies. But it's not such good news for airlines.

Further Gulf-Australia/NZ growth hinges on Qatar Airways, and reactions to it. Qatar added more capacity to Australia/NZ in 2016 than Emirates or Etihad, and this appears likely to repeat in 2017. Shortly after Qatar Airways announced its intent to fly nonstop to Auckland, Emirates mounted a nonstop Auckland service in a month - a breathtaking speed that delivered a sharp message that it would defend one of its most important markets.

Qatar's high growth over 2016 and 2017 has resulted in its ANZ size in 2017 becoming 77% of the size of Etihad (and 31% the size of Emirates). Qatar has narrowed the gap: as recently as 2015 Qatar was only 37% the size of Etihad and 14% the size of Emirates.

From early 2017 Air Canada and Virgin Australia introduce a tidy new partnership. Virgin Australia receives improved access to Canada - a market its existing JV partner Delta can't sufficiently cover from their shared Los Angeles gateway.

Since Virgin fell out with Air New Zealand, the Australian airline has been looking to reassert itself in Australia-North America markets that it had quietly let Air NZ dominate. Looking to re-establish its turf previously handed to its former shareholder, Virgin has already announced plans to resume trans-Pacific services from Melbourne, which Air NZ had taken traffic from.

International aviation is little more than a highly regulated and commercially complex mishmash of a business - as approximately 2,000 passengers, affected by the forced cancellation of several Tigerair services between Australia and Indonesia, discovered the hard way this week. The arcane regulatory system that governs international flights makes the Mad Hatter look sane. That said, authorities have plenty of discretion in how they apply the rules. On this occasion, seemingly one or two Indonesian bureaucrats suddenly suffered discretion deficit.

On Wednesday 11-Jan-2017 Tigerair Australia, at the peak of the summer holidays, was forced to suspend all its services between Indonesia and Australia. A temporary reprieve has since been granted to airline to allow it to transport affected passengers in Bali back to Australia - until Monday 16-Jan-2017.

In early Jan-2017 United Airlines announced plans to cut back its daily San Francisco-Auckland 787-8 service to operate only seasonally. It will suspend the service between 16-Apr-2017 and 28-Oct-2017. This is United's only flight to New Zealand, although it also has two daily flights to Sydney and one to Melbourne.

United started/resumed the service in Jul-2016. The flight operates under a joint venture with Air New Zealand. United's Australian services are excluded from the JV, at least for the time being. This may change for the duration of the Auckland suspension, but to a large extent the Australian services compete with Air New Zealand.

In the third and final article in this series, the Blue Swan Daily looks at long haul vs short haul LCCs. Is the feasibility of the LCC alternative for the corporate travel market limited only to short haul? Or can LCC's effectively compete with full service carriers on the medium and long haul markets as well.

In Part 2 of Blue Swan Daily's three part series on the increasing use of Low Cost Carriers by the business and corporate market, we look at we examine the commercial and practical feasibility of LCCs as an alternative to full service legacy carriers for corporate travellers and their travel managers.

As Qatar Airways prepares to launch direct services from Doha to Auckland, in competition with Emirates' existing Dubai - Auckland service, the Blue Swan Daily looks at the rise and rise of Gulf carriers in the Australia / NZ region.