QANTAS and Emirates have done a deal to work closely together on codeshares and flying between Australia and Europe.  This sees QANTAS backing away from a very long standing relationship with British Airways and a shift in using Singapore for QANTAS’ mid-point hub to Dubai.

This is a smart choice for QANTAS.  The tie-up doesn’t impact their operations at all and it allows QANTAS to use Emirates to distribute customers to Europe more efficiently while also providing the same service to London and the UK as well.

Emirates has eschewed the alliance game mostly but this is a very good move for Emirates as well.  Emirates will now have feed from a long established brand and it brings a greater legitimacy to Emirates.

But this hurts British Airways.  The partnership it has had with QANTAS has allowed the two airlines to survive on that long Kangaroo route between Australia and the United Kingdom.  Now BA must go it alone and that will be a tougher thing to achieve success on.

Oneworld will be impacted by this as well.  Part of me once thought that some sort of union between British Airways (IAG), QANTAS and American Airlines would have made for a very, very strong network.  Now, QANTAS is walking away from established behaviors and tradition towards doing business in a new way.  Quite rightly, too.

QANTAS will likely remain in Oneworld and you won’t see the cooperation between QANTAS and other partners fade away either.  But you won’t see any love between QANTAS and British Airways anymore either.

Frankly, I do wonder why QANTAS doesn’t just fly Australia to Dubai and let Emirates do all the work from Dubai onwards.  It’s a good fit that would actually allow QANTAS to get more use from its aircraft than flying ultra-long haul routes.

I do foresee one change for my own local area:  I think we’ll see an A380 flying the Dallas / Fort Worth to Australia route in the near future.  Say in one year or less.  I think this new Emirates union will free up aircraft and given the high demand that the DFW-Australia route has seen, QANTAS could use an A380 to fly SYD-DFW and DFW-SYD non-stop which would only help grow that route more by eliminating that nasty stop in Brisbane on the return portion.

Filed under: Airline Service by ajax