Bradley Perrett covered China, Japan, South Korea and Australia. He is a Mandarin-speaking Australian.
Before joining Aviation Week in 2006 he was a macroeconomics, politics and aerospace journalist with Reuters. Perrett holds a bachelor’s degree in law from Macquarie University, Sydney. He left Aviation Week in 2020.
Qantas is renewing its drive to cut labor costs, setting up a subsidiary that could bypass union agreements in hiring new cabin staff, potentially from overseas. Such a move would introduce the low-cost staffing arrangements of budget subsidiary Jetstar into the mainline carrier's operation.
The Pacific Blue unit of Australia's Virgin Blue started New Zealand domestic services last week, flying a triangular route between Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch. The initial Pacific Blue domestic schedule comprises a total of 10 daily roundtrips among those cities. Its competitors in this market are Air New Zealand and Qantas.
A Qantas order for 99 Airbus and Boeing narrow-body airliners signals that the Australian carrier’s expansion will rely heavily on profitable budget unit Jetstar and its Asian franchisees. The scale looks huge, since the venerable 87-year-old airline is ordering aircraft as if it has the growth plans of a baby-faced startup. “They now have more planes on order than they are flying,” JP Morgan analyst Matt Crowe says.
