*We must ensure
that the New Zealanders are informed at the right moment of what is afoot.
big enough share of the traffic available to make viable the really cheap fare they want. The single coupon fare would anyway be against the interests of S E Asian carriers and, by excluding any provision for stopovers, would damage South-East Asian tourist interests. would thus attract, without the underlying rationale of the favoured alternative, the same or nearly the same objections.
It
(ii) The introduction of whole plane charters of the
Laker type. This had been rejected because it would enable the charters to cream off the low fare traffic, thus increasing the problems of the scheduled carriers in maintaining a reasonable level of all-the-year-round on-demand services. Also there were a number of widely separated important traffic centres in Australia and it was vital that the new low fares should be available to all of them; this could only be satisfactorily done through scheduled services.
4 In discussion, the Australians were flexible on a number of points which we and BA put to them. They agreed that the new low fare should be available on an individual on demand basis, instead of part charter, in the hands of wholesalers. They were receptive to the proposal that BA flights might call at two Australian cities instead of the one originally envisaged, subject to examination of the effect on costs and agreed to consider the related issue of revenue pooling by BA and Qantas. They were willing to consider separate arrangements for cargo and for Concorde, which would not be able to operate viably to Australia without the ability to pick up and set down passengers en route. They also agreed to consider further how to accommodate our need to continue BA's services between the UK and New Zealand via Australia which are politically important to us and which are incompatible with the Australian scheme."
Advantages to the UK of the Australian Scheme
These are as follows:
(i) UK and Australian consumers will benefit from the
new low fares, the lowest of which could be around £200 lower than the current lowest return fare of £500. (ii) One-way passenger journeys are expected to increase by 75,000 to 100,000 the first year to a total of about 600,000. Most of the additional traffic would be passengers who would otherwise be unable to afford to travel.