Aussie airfares take a tumble in October

Australian discount airfares took a tumble in October as the nation’s economic malaise continued to bite. New government figures show the best discount fares were 9.6 percent lower than September 2019 and almost 10.3 percent lower than October last year. Business airfares were also down by 10.2 percent compared to the same month in 2018. The only fares monitored by the Bureau of Infrastructure, Transport and Regional Economics were in the restricted economy category. But even here the increase was a modest 1.8 percent compared to October 2018. READ: Is it sunset for Qantas' Project Sunrise? The troubled Australian economy has seen mixed results for airlines. Qanats chief executive Alan Joyce said recently that travel in the resource sector remained strong, but there was a weakness in the telecommunications and infrastructure sectors. He said this meant the airline was in balance when it came to business travel. But there was still weakness in price-sensitive leisure travel. He said low-cost offshoot Jetstar had been seeing leisure travel weakness since the federal election “and it hasn’t improved”. “So we’re keeping a very close eye on that,’’ he said. “I think some other segments of the economy that are in that space and are seeing the exact same weakness.” However, the Qantas boss said the airline was still seeing people spending money on travel experiences despite moves by the Reserve bank of Australia to cut interest rates to record lows. The Australian data was released as US statistics showed second-quarter 2019 airfares were up 2.5 percent on the same period last year. The US Department of Transportation said the average domestic itinerary airfare for the quarter was $US364. This was also 1.9 percent higher than the first quarter of 2019 but  14.4 percent less than the second quarter of 2014. However, the DoT noted the percentage of total operating revenue collected from fares in the first six months of 2019 was 73.5 percent. This was down from 88.5 percent in 1990 as airlines increasingly obtained additional income from passenger fees and other sources.