Jetstar aims to corner Tiger

Qantas subsidary carrier Jetstar Airways has revealed that it will add upto 77 new routes by increasing frequency on existing routes and adding new city pairs.

Jetstar is offering the new services from March 2010 and is able to operate these with the adding of 4x new A320 aircraft. Highlights include

• Additional Melbourne and Sydney service to the Gold Coast.
• Increasing on Sydney Cairns route.
• Twice daily Newcastle-Gold Coast
• Twice daily Sydney- Cairns
• Melbourne Townsville to go daily instead of thrice weekly.

The new developments will put pressure on fellow domestic carriers such as Tiger Airways and Virgin Blue which operate a number of these services.

In terms of domestic capacity, Jetstar Airways is currently the third largest carrier. Leading domestic carriers in Australia in terms of weekly flights and market share are;

• Qantas- 8544 weekly domestic flights- 39% market share
• Virgin Blue (DJ) 5952 weekly domestic flights - 27% market share
• Jetstar Airways (JQ) 2542 weekly domestic flights - 11% market share
• REX Airways (ZL) 2130 weekly domestic flights - 9% market share
• Tiger Airways (TT) 636 weekly domestic flights -2% market share.