Strategic Get Green Light for Chinese Expansion

Posted 08/06/2011

Australian carrier Strategic Airlines has received approval from the International Air Services Commission (IASC) to launch flights to China and will begin preparation work for the launch of flights during the second half of this year.  The company now has rights to introduce links to USA and China during what will be an exciting six month period in its development. 

Executives at Strategic Airlines remain tight-lipped over its operational plans although it has been suggested that they are looking initially at a three times weekly link between Brisbane and either Beijing or Shanghai.  It applied for 1,911 seats per week and plans to fully utilise this capacity by August 31, 2012.

An estimated 1.42 million O&D passengers travelled between Australia and China in the past year, a massive 28.7 per cent growth over the previous 12 months, but there is already competition from Brisbane with China Southern Airlines offering a link to Guangzhou.  Air China, China Eastern and Qantas also fly between Australia and China but don’t offering direct services from Brisbane.

Strategic Airlines will also shortly confirm its plans for the US market and as predicted by The HUB earlier this year, Honolulu in Hawaii will be its first destination.  Although the carrier has not made any formal announcement, it has made a supplementary filing with the US DOT detailing the Brisbane – Honolulu route with plans to launch services from September. 

---

With effect from March 19, 2012 the Breaking News coverage on Routesonline is powered by Airline Route.  For more analysis on these stories please read our expanded coverage of the key stories of the day in The HUB. 

You can also keep up to date with the latest network development news by following the live updates from @Routesonline, @TheHUBRoutes, @RouteExchange and @airlineroute on Twitter.  While all the latest news from our events can be seen by searching the #RoutesAfrica, #RoutesAmericas, #RoutesAsia, #RoutesCIS, #RoutesEurope and #WorldRoutes hashtags.

All material is copyright of UBM Aviation Routes but the views expressed are not necessarily the views of UBM Aviation Routes and the company shall therefore not be liable for the contents of any article that appears on the site.  Although the best efforts have been taken in collecting and checking the material we can not and do not warrant that the information contained in this product is complete or accurate and does not assume and hereby disclaims liability to any person for any loss of damage caused by errors or omissions.

PLEASE NOTE: From March 7, 2012 schedule data for all news stories has been extracted from OAG Schedules iNET; All GDS data is based on a live GDS update on the day of publication; Traffic data extracted from IATA BSP system for the year ending December 2011.  All information is subject to change.