Qantas boss Alan Joyce blames crime for Red Centre flight lag
Qantas chief executive Alan Joyce has picked a fight with Red Centre’s tourism industry, saying they could do more to lure passengers back. Read how they hit back.
Northern Territory
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Flights in and out of the Red Centre are still languishing well below pre-Covid levels despite Top End routes making a full recovery, with Qantas boss Alan Joyce blaming Alice Springs’ recent crime wave.
Speaking in Darwin on Friday where he and the company’s board met this week, Mr Joyce said high-profile coverage of the crime that wracked the town earlier this year had landed a direct hit on visitor numbers.
He said Qantas flights to the Territory were currently at 109 per cent of pre-Covid levels, while passenger flights into Alice Springs were still just 70 per cent of pre-Covid figures.
Mr Joyce took a swipe at local tourism operators on his way through the Territory, saying “we’d be strong advocates of them doing more than they are doing today”.
“(Crime) has impacted demand,” he said.
“We find when these things do happen there’s a lag effect where the issue’s resolved and it does take a while before demand comes back.
“We’ve tweaked capacity slightly but we’ve kept the capacity in place so there’s plenty of seats, we just need to have a concerted effort to start filling them again.
“The local tourist organisations really need to get behind this and do some really hard yards to get tourists to go back to Alice Springs.
“All tourism organisations, once there are plenty of seats, they help advertising, help communicating through their database and show the wonders, the fantastic place Alice Springs is and getting people back to travelling there.”
Tourism Central Australia chief executive Danial Rochford has returned serve, pointing the finger at Qantas’ reduced flights to the region in the chicken-and-egg spat.
“Tourism Central Australia continues to be active in our marketing, including a current campaign that is subsidising airfares into the region by almost $200 in association with Webjet,” Mr Rochford said.
“Qantas has not only dropped capacity into Alice Springs but they have hiked airfares which is making it so much harder to compete against other destinations.”
Mr Rochford rattled off a list of specific examples to support his case, citing the relative bargains on offer to Qantas customers outside Central Australia.
“On April 1 next year, you can buy a ticket from Melbourne to Hamilton Island for $287 which is a 2 hour and 55 minute flight, while travelling on the same day on the same aircraft type for 2 hours and 55 minute flight to Alice Springs is $350.
“Flying Darwin to Alice Springs next year, the cheapest you can fly is $423 one way to Alice Springs while on the same day and same aircraft type you can fly Darwin to Cairns for $350, which is a longer flight.
“Qantas needs to understand their strategies are strangling our tourism industry but more importantly strikes at the heart of the liveability of our amazing town.
“Tourism Central Australia continues to call on the Northern Territory government that more needs to be done to drive competition into the region.”
A spokeswoman for Tourism Minister Nicole Manison said the government committed $3m as a direct response to crime and anti-social behaviour in Alice Springs, which is currently in the market.
Meanwhile, Mr Joyce warned fares would increase and aircraft capacity would be cut during two years of planned tarmac upgrades at Darwin airport.
Mr Joyce said disruptions caused by the upgrades would be beyond the airline’s control.
“We understand the runway works have to be done, so that’s taken and it does have an impact and unfortunately there’s a number of ways it has an impact,” he said.
“It potentially limits the amount of hours we can operate here so that back of the clock operations that happen into Darwin may have to be moved, cancelled, we’re working through that plan.
“The runway may be shorter for a period of time and that means they may not be able to operate with full loads — all that means less capacity and that means there’s more demand than supply. It will impact prices as well for a while.
“We’ll do anything we can to make sure we minimise the impact of it but a lot of this has got to be outside of our control.”
As well as disrupting existing flights, the works have also forced the airline to delay the rollout of a new Darwin-Singapore route using the Embraer 190 until the upgrades are complete.
Mr Joyce said Covid-19 had forced Qantas’ executive to cancel a 2020 visit to Queensland and Darwin to celebrate the airline’s 100th anniversary in the places it was founded, so this week’s visit was meant to close that loop.
Mr Joyce thanked the NT government for the role it played supporting Qantas flights to London when Western Australia kept its borders locked and for hosting the thousands who returned to Covid quarantine at Howard Springs.
About 90 guests attended a cocktail party Qantas threw Thursday night for stakeholders, workers and government representatives at the airline’s old hangar in Parap.
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