Scootin’ around

Despite the delay, ‘Scooter 2’ arrived in Sydney at 10:25am on the morning of June 5 to a grand reception including the customary water arch salute, delivered courtesy of two aviation firefighting vehicles at the airport.

Sydney Airport CEO Kerrie Mather said: “This is an exciting day for Sydney Airport, with a brand new long-hau, low-cost carrier starting a daily service to Sydney on a wide-bodied aircraft.

“We’ve seen how low-cost carriers have stimulated demand here and overseas and Scoot’s daily service to Sydney will add 290,000 seats a year to this key growth corridor. Australians now have greater access than ever to a broad network of international destinations and Scoot is doing it with a difference, with great service at fantastic value.”

Scoot flies a daily service from Singapore to Sydney, joining Qantas and parent company Singapore Airlines, which fly twice and three times daily respectively.

The Sydney launch was followed a week later by the airline’s first service from Singapore to the Gold Coast, which it will fly five times a week — making it the only carrier to link the two cities. Lead-in fares from Sydney and the Gold Coast to Singapore start at $179 one-way, although recent sale fares have been lower.

The airline is operating two former Singapore Airlines Boeing 777-200s — named ‘Goin’ Scooting’ and ‘Barry’ through a social media campaign. Scoot aims to add a another two 777s this year and eventually to grow its fleet to 14 by 2016.

The aircraft are configured with 32 ‘ScootBiz’ seats in a 2+4+2 layout and 370 economy class seats in a 10 abreast, 3+4+3 configuration. It has no fixed in-flight entertainment but offers iPads preloaded with movies, music and TV shows for rent. it It will add a streaming IFE service similar to that already in use on some Qantas and Virgin Australia services later this year..

As well as the Gold Coast and Sydney, Scoot will fly to Bangkok in July, adding Tianjin a month later. The airline also begins a Singapore-Taipei-Tokyo service from October, which will it overtake Jetstar Asia as the largest low-cost carrier in Singapore, based on available seat-kilometres.

More Australian destinations are likely to be announced by the end of the year with the company saying previously its strategy was to link a number of destinations in China and Australia to the wider hub in Singapore. It already has begun offering connecting fares from the Gold Coast to Bangkok and is expected to offer more as it grows its network.

There has been no word if it will offer connecting service on Tiger Airways flights from Singapore despite the two carriers effectively operating under the SIA Group banner.

Scoot joins Kuala Lumpur-based AirAsia X and to a lesser extent Jetstar Asia in operating long-haul, low-cost services to Australia. It seems the company has AirAsia X firmly in its sights with the two effectively going head to head with Sydney and Gold Coast services, the latter having been AirAsia X’s first destination.

AirAsia X began its daily Sydney services only this in April after finally being granted rights by the Malaysian government.

Earlier this year, Scoot announced that it had recruited AirAsia X’s former head of commercial Darren Wright as its general manager Australia, while founding CEO Campbell Wilson had spent 15 years with the SIA group before moving across to Scoot in November last year.

The launch of the airline also is expected to further increase the pressure on other carriers in the region to respond. According to some reports, Thai Airways International is considering expanding its domestic low-cost carrier Nok Airways into a long-haul player to defend itself against the Scoot threat.

Jetstar, which flies Airbus A330-200 services from Singapore to Melbourne and Auckland, could extend this to Sydney to meet Scoot’s challenge although in doing so it could then pose a threat to Qantas, which flies twice a day on the same route.

So far, there has been little direct response to Scoot but with the long-haul LCCs all aiming to stake their claim on the market, it seems passengers will be the winners in a looming price war for travel to Asia over the coming year.