Regional travellers may have to alter their plans thanks to a change in Jetstar flight schedules that cut a number of early flights from the regions. Jetstar recently published its new regional schedule, which starts on October 29. The airline currently operates a seasonal schedule of 104 return services a week across its five regional routes. This will increase to between 107 and 114 with the new schedule, but with several of its early morning services cut. A Jetstar spokesman said the airline regularly operated seasonal schedules to match seat capacity with travel demand. "We're making some adjustments to our regional schedule to better align our flights to when our customers want to fly," he said. "Jetstar's regional network has been a success story for New Zealand travellers, bringing low fares to areas that had previously lacked competition and choice." Under the current flight schedule, Jetstar operates early morning flights between 6am and 8am out of New Plymouth, Nelson, Napier and Palmerston North. However under the incoming schedule, the earliest flight out of New Plymouth would be 11.45am. Napier would also lose its early morning flight to Auckland with customers set to arrive there at 10am instead of the current 7.35am. Nelson's 6.30am flight to Auckland would also be changed to depart at 10.15am with Palmerston North's first flight also pushed out. The spokesman said the earlier flights had been shifted to later in the day, however the airline was putting on earlier flights out of Auckland for business people travelling to the regions. "New Plymouth is more a leisure market for us so we have the mid-morning and mid-afternoon flights all week with the extra two weekend return services, on Friday and Sunday evenings," he said. "These services are targeted at weekend travellers coming to New Plymouth or locals heading to Auckland." This time last year Jetstar operated 122 return flights a week on the regional routes. That was reduced in July this year to the current seasonal schedule of 104 return flights. Hawke's Bay Chamber of Commerce chief executive Wayne Walford said he hoped this wouldn't impact on business travellers too much, but said Jetstar may be looking to fill a gap in the market at that time. "There are a lot of people that fly in and fly out early in the morning - I'm not sure what the numbers are but it is very busy. There's certainly a lot flying out of here," he said. "They may be trying to avoid competing directly with Air New Zealand because you see Jetstar and Air New Zealand in at the same time and going out within five minutes of each other so that direct competition may not have paid off for them." Air New Zealand operates early morning flights to and from Nelson, Napier, New Plymouth and Palmerston North during the week.
Not really reliable enough for business travellers. It's probaboy not that they cancel anymore then ANZ but the key difference is the lack of flights throughout the day which means they can't cover any cancellations as ANZ is able to. Definitely cheaper and not a massive difference in service so I guess aiming at the leisure market makes sense.
ReplyDeleteThey will now have big gaps in their schedule as of 29th of Oct. Interesting that they are now more focussed on the leisure traveller. They have added back some Friday and Sunday frequencies which is promising. I thought maybe PMR would be able to generate the most business traffic out of the regional centres that JQ fly too. One of JQ's Q300's first flight will not be until 9.05am to NSN.
ReplyDelete06:05am to Nelson 3 or 4 days a week. Nelson reductions is due to the reduced flights on NSN/WLG
DeleteThere are still big gaps in their schedule in auckland with planes sitting on the ground for over 2 hours.
DeleteJQ is essentially a leisure carrier with business travel as a sideline. Their new timetables are designed for leisure travellers only. Business travel can fly Air NZ regional, with its fleet of 49 ATR/Q300's compared JQ's 5 Q300's.
ReplyDeleteJQ Regional returning to it's LCC mantra is the best thing for it. That way it can attack the leisure travelers market which is equally lucrative, especially around holiday time and growing sports/events fixtures. As with all LCCs, you expect more fluidity in scheduling, something NZers have yet to get a handle on. Leaving the unforgiving business market to resource rich "full service" carrier Air NZ.
ReplyDeleteRubbish. Death knell is upon us.
DeleteTho whole idea was a mental business decision from the start.
A 50 seat aircraft cannot make money with the average fare well below $100 per seat.
Leisure traffic is seasonal as you say, but you need to maintain a reliable, frequent service year round to be depended on.
Jetstar were trying to push a business orientated programme only recently.
unless they can dramatically increase their average fare it will never make money.