ASEAN have expressed concern to the Australians at the possible harmful effects in ASEAN countries if stopovers
are not permitted and the hope that the Australian Government would give careful consideration to ASEAN
interests. Opponents of the scheme will also criticise
it as being protectionist and a cartel between the
two national airlines. There is also a risk that the
ASEAN countries and India will over-react to the
immediately evident disadvantages of the scheme for them,
and be sceptical of the benefits, particularly of the
Australian contention that there will be an increase
in longer-stay tourists to make up, the loss from stop-over tourists. It will be up to the Australians
to convince the countries concerned that Australian
tourists will fill the gap; there is no likelihood of British tourists in any number taking their holidays in
SE Asia.
(c) Europe
The Australians intend to negotiate the same kind of agreement with some European countries as with us (probably Yugoslavia, Greece, Italy and FRG and possibly Netherlands), ie restricted to an exchange of end-to-end rights. Frequency of services would have to be reduced probably by up to 50% depending on the route. others (probably France and Austria and possibly
Netherlands), if end-to-end traffic is not enough to
justify a service, they will terminate their agreements.
With
They believe that European opposition will not be strong
enough to black
scheme.
i