British Airways will be looking to add more codeshares with other airlines to Australia.
BA used to operate a joint business with Qantas from the UK to Australia but that ended on March 31 after 17 years as the Australian airline formed a new alliance with Emirates.
IAG chief executive Willie Walsh said that this change had made “no impact” so far on BA’s business to Australia although he added that trips Down Under represented a “small market” for BA.
“Australia is of some strategic importance to BA in that it is a global carrier and Australians might get upset if we didn’t fly there,” said Walsh during a presentation to City analysts.
Walsh added that BA would continue to do “some codesharing” with Qantas but the end of the joint business opened up new options with other carriers.
“We will look at alternative options in terms of serving the Australian market outside of Sydney,” he said. “We have already made some moves with Cathay Pacific over Hong Kong. We will look to complement that with other codeshare partnership arrangements with other airlines as well.”
BA has reduced capacity on its flights from Heathrow to Sydney by using a smaller Boeing 777-300 ER to replace the previous B747-400 on the route. These flights have also moved into Terminal 5 from Terminal 3 at Heathrow.
Walsh said there was no current plan to increase capacity on the transatlantic routes, although there would be some “impact” from the introduction of the Airbus A380 on the route to Los Angeles later this year.
“At the moment I’m very comfortable with the capacity we have, although it is always under review,” he added.
Walsh said that the planned merger of current transatlantic partner American Airlines with US Airways would also be “positive” for IAG.
“It gives BA an opportunity at the hubs of Phoenix and Charlotte to strengthen our position in terms of feeding traffic on to the transatlantic routes,” he added.
Walsh also said that BA had seen “no effects” from Virgin Atlantic’s launch of its first domestic flights under the new Little Red brand last month.
“We have not seen any effects – I don’t know how they are dong and have only heard anecdotal things,” he said. “It’s insignificant in the overall scale of things and has not changed our views on anything.”
ba.com