All in the mix

Australia’s major airline fleets reflect the changing competitive environment

Arguably the pace and scope of change being experienced by Australia’s airline industry at present is as significant as that of the late 1990s and early 2000s when low-cost airlines entered the market and Ansett fell into demise.

The collapse of Ansett broke the comfortable duopoly it and Australian Airlines/Qantas had enjoyed, but in its place came a full-service monopoly extending into regional areas where Ansett-affiliated feeder airlines once operated. Low-cost airlines had mobilised travellers in Australia just as they had done in the US and to a lesser extent Europe in the preceding decades, though the concept had at that time not yet reached Asia.