SINGAPORE Airlines and Thai Airways plan a joint strategy to break the stranglehold of Oneworld rivals British Airways and Qantas on UK-Australia routes.
The two long-time Asian rivals have plans to work together after SIA confirmed it will join the nine-strong Star Alliance, of which Thai is a founder member, next spring.
SIA’s entry into Star Alliance had raised doubts about Thai’s future in the group, but executives of both airlines said there were plenty of opportunities to work together within the group,
They claimed their Singapore and Bangkok hubs were well placed to capitalise jointly on the high-density traffic between the UK and Australia.
SIA deputy chairman Cheong Choong Kong said:”I believe it is possible to develop two hubs jointly even if they are close and compete with each other. Look at Copenhagen and Frankfurt, the hubs of Star Alliance members SAS and Lufthansa.
“They are close and work well for both airlines. We compete with Thai as individual airlines, but there are plenty of synergies which we can develop and exploit together.”
SIA has held tentative discussions to explore the implementation of the twin hub concept with Thai.
Both carriers confirmed they are to hold further senior level talks within weeks to draw up plans for joint marketing on a number of routes as well as forging links between their frequent-flyer programmes.
Cheong added: “This gives us the ability to offer different flight combination options to many destinations.
“British Airways and Qantas have a large amount of traffic to southeast Asia and beyond, but we can use two hubs to maximise their potential and compete even more.”
BA and Qantas have strong market share from Heathrow on the UK-Australia ‘kangaroo’ route feeding off each other’s services through Bangkok, Singapore, Hong Kong, Tokyo, Kuala Lumpur, Johannesburg, Los Angeles and San Francisco. But Bangkok and Singapore are their main transfer hubs.