Tigerair re-starts low cost flights Canberra-Melbourne
While some details remain under wraps at this hour, Tigerair has confirmed it is resuming budget flights between Canberra and Melbourne for the first time since its illustrious predecessor Tiger Airways was grounded in 2011.
The partial curtain raiser is in the Canberra Times.
The news comes but weeks before Singapore Airlines begins daily flights each way between Canberra and Singapore with a daily extension each way between the national capital of Australia and that of New Zealand in Wellington.
That route will be first operated by an SQ 777-200, but don’t be surprised if it starts running A350s on it before much longer.
Tiger Air under a very different management than today tried to sell seats on its Melbourne flights for as much as $398 one way, making it about as doomed as it possibly could be even before it was grounded by CASA.
No doubt this time there will be genuine bargains from the Tigerair that is now fully owned by Virgin Australia.
The interesting question is how long it might take Jetstar to also begin flights to Canberra?
As well as Scoot, and AirAsiaX.
Canberra is held back from serious tourism growth fed by long haul carriers by lack of hotel capacity. It might take time to lift available rooms by a total of at least 1000 a night which is a reasonable starting figure for tour operators to support three or four daily medium sized widebody jets on international routes to the airport.
But the potential is clearly there. In terms of domestic low fare flights other routes begging to be served include the Gold Coast, Launceston and Adelaide, as well as a need for competition for the incredibly slow and not particularly cheap CountryLink Xplorer rail service.
For inbound domestic visitors to Canberra the War Memorial, the science and technology attractions of Questacon, and the magnificent National Museum of Australia over on the Acton Peninsula are all potential magnets for school parties or charters.
In the 60s it was in fact commonplace for high schools in Sydney to charter Fokker Friendships to do day long visits to the now ‘old’ Parliament House and the War Memorial. It was impossible to do it any other way, as the road trip, pre-freeways, could take around five hours one way, and the Canberra-Monaro ‘express’ which divided outside Canberra, never had the capacity nor interest nor timetable to take an extra 50-100 students.
If Tigerair meets this potential demand from school parties it will be a fine thing from the point of view of educational tours and a better appreciation of Australian history, and what has become a beautiful and interesting destination.
It is inevitable that there will be non-stop services between Canberra and cities in China within ten years, and even if recession intervenes.
