Australia’s Qantas Airways and Pacific Airlines of Vietnam yesterday announced plans to develop Pacific into a low-cost airline through massive expansion during the next six years.
Under a strategic and commercial partnership agreement, the new airline will be renamed Jetstar Pacific and operate as part of the Qantas budget carrier’s brand, Qantas said in a statement.
Up to 30 Airbus A320 planes will be added to the fleet by 2014, Qantas said.
“The first A320 is proposed to enter Jetstar Pacific’s operations in August 2008, initially within Vietnam before expanding later this year into markets such as Thailand, Singapore, Malaysia and Cambodia,” Qantas said.
Pacific will take on its new name on May 23.
The new airline is part of Jetstar’s expansion in Asia. Jetstar began flying within Australia in 2004, and launched international long haul flights within Asia in 2006 and has a regional base in Singapore. It flies throughout Southeast Asia, Australia and Hong Kong.
Qantas hopes to extend Jetstar’s international operations to Europe and the US, but analysts say they are being hampered by delays to the delivery of Boeing’s 787 jetliners.
Qantas bought 18 percent of Pacific Airlines in July last year and under the business plan will increase its stake to 30 percent in 2010. The airline did not say how much the extra stake was expected to cost.
Qantas chief executive Geoff Dixon said that by joining Jetstar, the Vietnamese carrier would help form one of the largest and fastest growing airline brands in the region.
“Jetstar Pacific will be able to access and leverage the significant expertise and resources within the Qantas Group that will help enable its planned future growth,” Dixon said.
Taiwan’s Lee Chia-hao (李佳豪) on Sunday won a silver medal at the All England Open Badminton Championships in Birmingham, England, a career best. Lee, 25, took silver in the final of the men’s singles against world No. 1 Shi Yuqi (石宇奇) of China, who won 21-17, 21-19 in a tough match that lasted 51 minutes. After the match, the Taiwanese player, who ranks No. 22 in the world, said it felt unreal to be challenging an opponent of Shi’s caliber. “I had to be in peak form, and constantly switch my rhythm and tactics in order to score points effectively,” he said. Lee got
EMBRACING TAIWAN: US lawmakers have introduced an act aiming to replace the use of ‘Chinese Taipei’ with ‘Taiwan’ across all Washington’s federal agencies A group of US House of Representatives lawmakers has introduced legislation to replace the term “Chinese Taipei” with “Taiwan” across all federal agencies. US Representative Byron Donalds announced the introduction of the “America supports Taiwan act,” which would mandate federal agencies adopt “Taiwan” in place of “Chinese Taipei,” a news release on his page on the US House of Representatives’ Web site said. US representatives Mike Collins, Barry Moore and Tom Tiffany are cosponsors of the legislation, US political newspaper The Hill reported yesterday. “The legislation is a push to normalize the position of Taiwan as an autonomous country, although the official US
CHANGE OF TONE: G7 foreign ministers dropped past reassurances that there is no change in the position of the G7 members on Taiwan, including ‘one China’ policies G7 foreign ministers on Friday took a tough stance on China, stepping up their language on Taiwan and omitting some conciliatory references from past statements, including to “one China” policies. A statement by ministers meeting in Canada mirrored last month’s Japan-US statement in condemning “coercion” toward Taiwan. Compared with a G7 foreign ministers’ statement in November last year, the statement added members’ concerns over China’s nuclear buildup, although it omitted references to their concerns about Beijing’s human rights abuses in Xinjiang, Tibet and Hong Kong. Also missing were references stressing the desire for “constructive and stable relations with China” and
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday said it has lodged a protest with Pretoria after the name of the Taipei Liaison Office in South Africa was changed to the “Taipei Commercial Office” on the South African Department of International Relations and Cooperation’s (DIRCO) Web site. In October last year, the South African government asked Taiwan to relocate the Taipei Liaison Office, the nation’s de facto embassy, out of Pretoria. It later agreed to continue negotiating through official channels, but in January asked that the office be relocated by the end of this month. As of the middle of last month, DIRCO’s Web
RSS