the biggest thing here is how we
grow ourselves as opposed to what
competitors are doing.”
Peach currently operates 19 A320s,
with four more to come and an order
in place for 10 A320neos. It has said it
plans to boost its fleet to more than 50
post-merger and to add more routes as
it looks to expand into medium-length
international flights. Vanilla has 13
A320s.
Another key to future growth for
Jetstar is going to be a significant
expansion of its codeshare and
interline arrangements, critical to
expanding the feeder traffic it needs
from international markets. At
present, it only has three codeshare
agreements, not surprisingly with
Qantas, Japan Airlines and American
Airlines. There are also a number
of interline pacts with other foreign
carriers.
Rohrlach says Jetstar Japan wants
to replicate the highly successful
strategy of its sister operator, Jetstar
Asia in Singapore, which has a swathe
of codeshare and interline agreements
with full-service carriers ranging
from Qantas and Emirates, to British
Airways, Air France, Lufthansa,
Turkish Airlines and China Southern
Airlines.
“We have the biggest domestic
network out of Narita, even bigger
than JAL or ANA, because this is our
home base and domestic focus. We
see a few hundred passengers a day
coming across not only our codeshares
but also our interline connections.
For Jetstar Asia they play a massive
role in Changi obviously. We’re a few
years behind that but we are seeing
the same demand from other foreign
airlines. The growth of other airlines
coming in is all good for us because as
Narita expands and other full-service
airlines come in we would hope
very much to replicate Jetstar Asia’s
success in that sense.”
Would Jetstar ever consider
venturing into long-haul itself?
“We look at all sorts of different
things but given all the constraints in
Japan I think the bigger opportunities
for us are really going to be in
domestic and really making sure
that we stay number one as we get to
30 per cent LCC penetration,” he says.
While the future looks bright,
no-one is pretending there won’t be
challenges ahead.
“Probably for the next year but
also out to that 2030 view there are
always going to be constraints,” says
Rohralch.
“The first thing of course is the
resources generally here in Japan.We talk about it a lot. It is a declining
population. Then of course aviation
has very specialised resources. There
is a lot of press attention on the pilot
shortage. That’s a global problem
obviously but here in Japan it is
actually much broader than just pilots.
For us, finding the right talent and
the right resources at the right price
is a challenge. It’s hard enough for
any LCC but I think it is going to be
particularly hard in Japan.
“Also, this is a country which
is usually a very good adopter of
technology so it is now incumbent
on us to meet that human capital
challenge with IT and stuff like that.
We’re trying to drive things like on-
line check-in and kiosk usage. We are
the first LCC here that allows you to
check-in on your mobile phone and
go straight to the gate. Those sort of
things are even more important here
than in other markets around the
region. Responding to that resourcing
challenge in smart ways is probably
challenge number one, two and three
on the list.
“Probably the second constraint
obviously is airport infrastructure...
this is obviously not China... we’re not
able to throw up an airport in a year.
This will be a really big challenge for
Japan generally.”Jetstar Japan now operates 22
A320s.JETSTAR‘Responding
to that
resourcing
challenge in
smart ways
is probably
challenge
number one.’
NICK ROHRLACHJetstar Japan