Fare Wars Down Under

With the introduction of Tiger Airways into the Oz domestic market there are a number of fare wars taking place - great for the consumer.

Tiger are having a $10 sale and they are based out of Melbourne - excellent. I have just booked $10 one way fares to Adelaide, Newcastle and Hobart for various w/es away and today Darwin for this w/e. Long way to go for what ends up as being 22 hours but hey at $20 return why not!

Next week Jetstar are having a $9 sale one upmanship is great! Wonder what DJ will do?

Will see what Tiger are like.

As an update I recieved an email from Jetstar stating they are having a 1 cent sale to celebrate the introduction of their Jetlite fares - for those who don't check in bags. Although the hand luggage allowance is increased to 10kg.

They need to start, all airlines, enforcing the hand luggage rules as travelling domestically here if you are not on the aircraft in the first 60-70% ish there is no room left to stow hand luggage (and most of what is being brought on won't fit under the seat).

A colleague came down from Brisbane recently and the Capatain stated the flight was being delayed due to passengers being unable to stow their hand luggage on the aircraft and refusing to have it checked in and that if it wasn't sorted quickly he was going to offload pax!
It is weird here as it is rare to interact with a human until boarding passes are checked at the gate - and this is usually by the flight attendants.

Its set to get more interesting on the international scene too.

Open Skies agreement announcement today effectively breaking Qantas/United monopoly on the trans-pacific route with V Australia scheduled to start operation in the last quarter 08.