Source : THE AGE NEWS
Less than two years ago, public fury towards the aviation sector – and the Albanese government’s handling of it – was white-hot.
Consumers, pent-up in their homes since 2020 by COVID-19 lockdowns, had returned to travel with a vengeance, only to find ticket prices soared, service had suffered, and the revelations surrounding Qantas’ behaviour turned the company’s then-chief executive Alan Joyce into an emblem of corporate overreach.
Qantas and Virgin Australia are unlikely to engage in a price war.Credit: Bloomberg
Public dissatisfaction with Qantas was compounded by the decision of the Albanese government to block and then relent and allow long-haul competitor Qatar Airways to offer more services to Australia through domestic carrier Virgin Australia.
Calls for reform and for competition reached fever pitch.
So, less than two years and one federal election later, what has changed for the flying public?
The most noticeable near-term boost to competition may, in fact, be from Qatar’s entry into the domestic market through its purchase of 25 per cent of Virgin.
Enter Qatar Airways: One of the Boeing 777s it will use to fly Australians to Doha and Europe.Credit: Getty Images
University of Sydney business professor Rico Merkert said Doha-based Qatar’s deep pockets and influence over Virgin’s domestic operation may usher in more “competitive force” nationally.
“Qatar will have an interest to push Virgin to do more domestically, to pick up more traffic that will feed the Qatar long-haul flights … So they will have an incentive to provide more competition to Qantas.”
University of Sydney business professor Rico Merkert.Credit: USBS
In this way, the “healing hand of the market” may have an effect, he said.
Qantas chief executive Vanessa Hudson, speaking during the company’s half-year results in February, said: “We always said that we welcome competition … Our focus is about looking after our customers. We feel really confident in being able to compete.”
Six months before Qatar’s entry into the market was given final approval, the government released its long-awaited Aviation White Paper to address broader industry concerns.
The White Paper calls for legislation to create an Aviation Industry Ombuds Scheme, with the “power to direct airlines and airports to provide remedies to consumers”. It also includes a proposal for a new Aviation Customer Rights Charter.
A spokeswoman for Minister for Infrastructure and Transport Catherine King said: “The Albanese Labor government has introduced the most comprehensive reforms to the aviation sector in 25 years.”
Yet even before the White Paper’s release, the prospect for domestic competition dimmed, with significant changes for two smaller players in 2024: Rex, for “regional express”, went into administration in July and stopped flying to capital cities, while Bonza went out of business in April.
The Albanese government, which had acquired $50 million in debt from Rex in January, said it would step in to ensure regional flights continue to fly while it seeks a new buyer.
With Rex out of the picture, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission found real average fare revenue per passenger had increased by about 3 percentage points to 13.6 per cent in the second half of 2024 following “the loss of competition from Rex’s exit on these routes”.
By the end of the year, Virgin Australia, Qantas and the Qantas-owned Jetstar controlled a combined 98.6 per cent of the domestic market.
On-time arrivals for all airlines averaged 80.2 per cent in March, a fall from the long-term average of 80.7 per cent, according to Bureau of Infrastructure and Transport Research Economics numbers. On-time departures averaged 80.7 per cent, down from an average of 81.8 per cent, although airlines blamed the impact of Cyclone Alfred in Queensland.
Consumer advocate Adam Glezer of Consumer Champion says that, in this climate, the pace of reform is too slow.
“There is no momentum in terms of anything meaningful,” he said.
“By preparing the Aviation White Paper, it appears that the government is trying to appease the public by saying, ‘we are putting you first’, while they’re effectively doing nothing.”
Capacity constraints at Sydney Airport are partly to blame for the lack of domestic competition.Credit: Peter Rae
While the government and regulators can set the conditions for the industry, the market would be needed to produce competitive dynamics. That likely means a third or even fourth domestic airline would be necessary.
University of Sydney’s Merkert says that if a new, viable domestic carrier did emerge, it would need to profitable, so it would need access to the domestic premium market of Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne, which is a “golden triangle” of profitability.
“The real margins are made domestically, and especially on that sector,” he said.
For now, Merkert says Qantas and Virgin are “showing capacity discipline” on the capital city routes, ensuring that they don’t compete to the point of undercutting their own profits.
“They have almost an informal agreement to be quite happy as what we would call a ‘duopoly’ because that allows both of them to generate very healthy revenues and profit margins.”
Ahead of an expected ASX relisting, Virgin has swung to profit. The company’s earnings before interest and tax rose to $519.4 million in 2024, up 18 per cent from $439.4 million in 2023, on growing demand from premium leisure and corporate travellers as well as budget-passengers.
Qantas posted an 11 per cent increase in pre-tax profit of $1.4 billion in the half-year to December and flagged a domestic fleet refresh of plane interiors. It’s also adding new Airbus A321XLRs.
The Coalition, for its part, has been less impressed by the state of the air travel industry.
Before the May 3 federal election, in which voters resoundingly backed the Labor government of Anthony Albanese, Shadow Infrastructure and Transport Minister Senator Bridget McKenzie said that “under Labor, aviation competition has nosedived”.
In April, McKenzie proposed the creation of a two-year trial that would allow international airlines flying into Darwin to carry domestic passengers between that city and other Australian capitals, a process known as cabotage.
Slot machinations
There are other obstacles for more robust domestic competition. Capacity constraints at Sydney Airport are also to blame, Merkert says. With its limited number of “slots” – the time allotments for the use of the “airport infrastructure necessary to arrive or depart” – as well as the airport’s curfew, Sydney airport constraints can hold back capacity across the “golden triangle”.
Sydney’s airport, restricted to 80 aircraft movements an hour, has not had “flexibility to respond to delays caused by disruptions like bad weather”.
Merkert says a potential competitor to Qantas or Virgin would need a set of two slots in Sydney, one for the morning and one for the evening, for business and premium customers wanting commuter service. Nearly one-third of Sydney’s total slot pool is reportedly available to new entrants, but with only one in 10 slots available in peak periods.
“You need to have two slots each day and that is getting increasingly difficult, if not impossible,” Merkert says.
Sydney Airport chief Scott Charlton said: “There’s been good progress in the last six months on reforms at Sydney Airport, including a new slot co-ordinator and an audit of slot use.”
Slots at Sydney Airport are in high demand.Credit: Getty Images
The airport is also implementing a “recovery period”, which will allow airlines access to more slots following weather disruptions, he said.
In April, Airport Coordination – a UK-based outfit with a vast international client base – took over Sydney’s slot management from the government-formed Airport Coordination Australia, pledging more transparency on slot usage, on which it says it will publish regular data.
There’s no momentum for real airline reform, says Adam Glezer.Credit: Simon Schluter
A spokeswoman for minister King said: “We’ve passed legislation to reform the slot system at Sydney Airport, boosting competition and levelling the playing field for new entrants.”
With the market power effectively held by two airline groups (Qantas owns Jetstar), domestic airlines face few financial or regulatory consequences for shifting or cancelling scheduled flights. Customer advocates say a customer rights charter upheld by an ombuds scheme would need the power to force airlines to pay compensation.
To that end, Nationals Senator Bridget McKenzie last year sponsored a “pay on delay” bill, which would put explicit penalties on airlines for delaying or cancelling flights for commercial reasons. The bill remains before the Senate.
University of Maryland researcher Jingyi Xin says compensation schemes can hurt discount airlines.Credit:
Enshrining customers’ rights to get a refund for delayed and cancelled flights is a path already blazed by the European Union, which has had such legislation since 2005, and more recently the US, which under the Joe Biden administration instituted a rule change that entitled passengers to a refund “if their flight is cancelled or significantly changed”.
Peter Forsyth, aviation consultant and former professor of economics at Monash University, says if such a compensation scheme were imposed in Australia, “there’s a question about who pays for it. My guess is that much of the cost would go to the passenger ultimately.”
But how much would that cost be? In Europe, the additional cost per passenger resulting from its compensation scheme was estimated in 2022 to be between US60¢ and $US1.20 (94¢ to $1.87), according to passenger advocacy business AirHelp.
Would the threat of a compensation scheme force airlines to lift their game? It’s not clear.
University of Maryland researcher Jingyi Xing found that the EU customer compensation scheme legislation called EC261, introduced in 2005, reduced the proportion of flights delayed for more than three hours. But it also led to a fall in the share of flights with delays up to 15 minutes, or those arriving early.
The “EC261 does not improve the overall on-time performance of flights,” Xing said.
“A compensation policy like this affects not only consumer welfare but also competition among firms,” she said.
“Because all carriers are subject to the same compensation scheme, low-cost carriers may be placed at a disadvantage relative to legacy carriers as they charge cheaper prices and have lower revenues,” she said.
That means one fallout of such a scheme could be a further shake-out of low-cost carriers on certain routes. “This could ultimately lead to higher prices and harm to consumers,” she says.
Given the situation in Australia, with two companies providing almost all domestic flights, it’s hard to imagine a further reduction in airline choice.
Glezer, who for a fee helps customers claw back money from businesses, said: “COVID … should have been a wake-up call for the government to implement change for the Australian flying public.
“How anyone can say Australians should not be entitled to a full refund for all flight cancellations is mind-boggling.
“The fact that the government hasn’t implemented this shows their disregard for the consumer.”
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