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Qantas CEO Joyce: plenty of alternatives to Qatar Airways
November 23rd 2018
Qantas Airways appears to be putting up little resistance to Qatar Airways' planned exit from the oneworld alliance. Read More »
"If they decide to leave, it is because it is no longer working for them. Nobody should be in an alliance where they believe it's not working for them. If Qatar feels they will do better outside of oneworld, that is up to them," Qantas CEO, Alan Joyce, told the South China Morning Post.
Qatar Airways Group CEO, Akbar Al Baker, has said there was a real possibility the Doha-based carrier would exit oneworld, following disagreements with alliance fellows American Airlines and Qantas.
The Qatar Airways boss criticized Qantas for sending out an internal memo bemoaning Qatar Airways' expansion into Australia. Joyce said Qantas did not oppose Qatar's expansion, but would like to see it done on fair market terms.
"Our view has been very simple. We are after fair competition. If aviation was governed by the World Trade Organisation, there would be some dumping cases against people for going in well below cost to force people off routes and markets. We think those rules should apply to aviation markets," Joyce said.
The Qantas chief said his airline could replace most of the destinations served via Qatar Airways with routes operated in cooperation with Dubai's Emirates Airline and its recently concluded cooperation agreement with Air France-KLM.
"We’ve plenty of alternative mechanisms, which is the way our network is designed. People have a lot of choice on the Qantas-coded network to travel to the same European points that they have been using with Qatar,” Joyce said.
