Jetstar’s international focus set on regional China

31 August, 2017

Before the announcement of her impending move to Qantas Loyalty, Jetstar Group CEO Jayne Hrdlicka took the time to speak to us about the carrier's expansion into China and the importance the region will have on the future of aviation.

Speaking on the side lines of the 2017 CAPA Australia Pacific Aviation and Corporate Travel Summit, Ms Hrdlicka explained that the Asia Pacific region is growing at a rate which is unprecedented, driven quite a lot by the growth in China and the growing middle class throughout Asia and the pacific.

"All of our airlines: Australia; New Zealand; Vietnam; Japan; and Singapore are benefiting from increasing mobility across the region. That means people interested in flying are now getting access for the first time."

"Each of our businesses is building exciting opportunities to enhance their networks into China. We are building opportunities for Australians to travel into the region and especially parts of the region which they haven't had access before. We launched Vietnam this year, that's gone ahead of our expectations, and we think there is a number of different destinations that we can continue to add to the network to help both aspects of the region continue to develop and unfold."

And enhance their network they did. Jetstar announced on 23-Aug-2017 plans to launch twice weekly Melbourne-Zhengzhou service from Dec-2017, operating with Boeing 787 aircraft. The carrier expects to handle an additional 35,000 Chinese tourists to Australia p/a with the new service.

"For Jetstar our business is a price driven travel and China is very well served to its big major commercial centres, it's less well served in its secondary and tertiary cities into some of our key markets. Australia, Japan and Vietnam for example, are great markets that are pretty underpenetrated in terms of Chinese tourists to travel outbound, as well as for our key customers in our core markets to travel into China."

"We also see the tourism growth out of China to be at very exciting levels. 120 million Chinese travellers today, growing to 800 million by 2034 that's just extraordinary growth and we are making sure that each one of our airlines is to benefit from that and to support the opportunity to the best of our ability."