EUROPE
7 Current weekly services (each way) between European points and Australia are as follows:
Qantas
European Carrier
Amsterdam
2
2 (KLM)
Total
4
Athens
4
0
4
Belgrade
1
2 (JAT)
3
Frankfurt
4
3 (Lufthansa)
7
Vienna
1
о
1
Paris
1
1 (UTA/Air France)
2
Rome
3
3 (Alitalia)
6
London
10
10 (BA)
207
8 The Australian criteria for deciding which of these services should be maintained are based on the present level of traffic and the likely amount of new traffic which would be generated by lower air fares. The only points other than London, which fully satisfy these criteria are Frankfurt and Rome. However the Australians have not overlooked the domestic political significance of two "marginal" markets: Athens and Belgrade because of Greek and Jugoslav immigrants. Traffic to and from Belgrade could probably justify one end-to-end service for each airline per week and that to and from Athens one by Qantas alone. Services between Australia and the Netherlands are in the balance. It is possible that the Australians might decide that the current and likely future levels of end to end traffic do not justify the continuation of end to end services. The Dutch have caught wind of this, and have already stated that they do not think that curtailment of services would be justified. The Australians are still considering this problem. The Austraians propose to discontinue all services between Paris and Australia and between Austria and Australia.
9 The European countries most affected are likely to complair but the Australians will have to bear the brunt of that. Some of them, notably the Dutch, whose airlines have poached some the UK/Australia traffic by linking back to back services will be excluded from legitimately using the new UK-Australia low fare and on past experience will mutter complaints about this.
But we do not regard that as serious.
1
4.