Qantas: Not Enough Flights to China

Pikes Wines, a vineyard in the Clare Valley of South Australia, has seen its business in Asia soar, with sales to China accounting for 20 percent of exports, up from zero five years ago. That’s one reason Pikes sales chief Peter Bentley takes about 80 domestic and international flights each year for work. But Qantas Airways —long known for connecting Australia to the rest of the world—offers only seven flights a week to China. (Air China and China Southern Airlines together have more than 50.) “They don’t have enough choices,” says Bentley. “We are on the doorstep of Asia and that is where we have the growth, and yet we seem to have these outdated ties to Mother England.”

When the flying kangaroo was first painted on Qantas planes in 1947, more than half of Australians were born in the U.K. Today, only a quarter are of English descent. But the failure to adapt to that change and rising long-haul competition from Middle Eastern carriers has seen Qantas’s share of Australian arrivals slump to less than 20 percent from more than 35 percent a decade ago. The number of passengers flying to London was little changed over the past decade, while those headed for Beijing or Shanghai almost tripled.