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Strategic Airlines has lodged a competing application with the International Air Services Commission (IASC) for additional capacity on the Indonesia route, as more Indonesian carriers look to fly to Australia.
Strategic’s application seeks an allocation of 1716 seats per week on the Indonesia route for new services which would be operated by the airline’s A320 fleet, which would effectively allow it to offer an additional 11 services per week to Indonesia. Strategic has not indicated which of the major gateway cities it would fly its services from, but it does note that it intends to launch additional services to Indonesia from December 2010, with the full allocation to be utilised by October 31 2011.
Strategic currently operates three times weekly services on the Perth-Denpasar route, and will commence a weekly service from August 3 on the Brisbane-Port Hedland-Denpasar route.
The application comes after Qantas lodged an application for an allocation of 3898 seats on the Indonesia route, which would allow Jetstar to increase its services there with both A320s and A330-200s. With the competition now for the limited number of seats available on the Indonesia route, any other competing carriers will have to notify the Commission of their intent to lodge an application by August 3, with the full application due by August 10.
Meanwhile, a number of Indonesian carriers are lining up for the additional 4000 seats available each week under an expanded bilateral agreement between the Australian and Indonesian governments. As well as Lion Air and Batavia Air having identified themselves, media reports from Indonesia claim that Sriwijaya Air is planning to launch daily services from Denpasar to Perth, while Indonesia AirAsia is proposing to launch four times weekly services from Denpasar to Darwin, replacing services recently withdrawn by Garuda Indonesia.
