Qantas seeks route renewals
- Friday, 15 September 2006
With a large number of international route allocations expiring between mid February and mid September next year - many of them on June 30 - Qantas has applied to the International Air Services Commission in Canberra for renewal of determinations.
The IASC also dealt recently with another Qantas request, covering the carrier’s freighter service between Australia and Frankfurt-Hahn via Singapore and Dubai.
This was a procedural affair which became necessary because of a change of circumstances on the service which is flown by Atlas Air.
The operation began in May as a charter and then changed to a part-charter in late July when about half the capacity was relinquished to a third party.
It was subsequently decided that the best operational mode was as a scheduled service. However, while Qantas held allocations for unlimited capacity and frequency for all-cargo services under the agreements with Singapore and Germany, it was not covered for the UAE.
In order to implement the scheduled service, Qantas requested from IASC "an allocation of unlimited capacity and frequency, for the operation of all-cargo services, for use over the entire route under the Australia-UAE air services arrangements, for a period of 10 years".
Determination [2006] IASC 106, issued in September, made the necessary allocation.
The raft of renewals sought by Qantas covers a huge variety of routes as well as both cargo and passenger allocations.
Among those expiring on June 30 are 14 passenger frequencies and one cargo frequency on the Hong Kong route, unlimited passenger and freight capacity on trans-Tasman routes to New Zealand, codeshare arrangements with UPS on the US route, and capacity on routes to Thailand, Germany, Japan, French Polynesia, Indonesia, Korea, the Philippines, Papua New Guinea and South Africa.
