Yesterday Air NZ announced increased an increase in flights of its no frills carrier, Freedom, into Queensland, reducing prices compared to its own Air NZ service

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/Forum7/HTML/000348.html

The response of QF (in any) will be interesting.

Air NZ actions seem to be against Virgin more that QF.

Possible End Game scenario
(a) QF takes control of Air NZ (Air NZ joins oneworld)
(b) Air NZ / QF forced to give up slots in Oz NZ routes due to competition - monopoly considerations by the Australian regulators
(c) The other Australian airline, Virgin Blue (DJ) get the slots
(d) Virgin joins *star to get feeder traffic (note a recent alliance of DJ with United; Virgin already associated with SQ with Virgin Atlantic)
(e) Freedom flies trans Tasman head to head with DJ
(f) QF / NZ flies trans Tasman on other routes
(g) Air NZ sole long haul route left as London via USA / pacific islands (QF goes the other way via Asia to Oz)
(h) No frills service to Asia from Australia on the new Qantas airline, Australian Airline,(soon to begin flying)
(i) QF does all other long haul routes from Australia - NZ region


[This message has been edited by Mwenenzi (edited 07-12-2002).]