Consumerist

I'm glad this has happened. More competition will only help in this case.

Horray for some form of competition! But at the same time, expect service to tank along with the prices... (the naysayer portion of me says that)

It's Qantas, not Quantas.

So now will we see commercials with a little cute koala saying "I hate Virgin Blue..."? :)

I hope it goes down soon, I really want to go down to Australia and cheaper air would go a long way to helping out.

Dont be so sure my dear Consumerists. This deal is more smoke screen than substance. Qantas will still dominate the route and continue to gouge. It currently charges 40% more per customer kilometre (the standard industry measure) than it does on the more competitive Sydney to London route. See my post on this called "there is no one I dont hate right now" here

i hope so - as an aussie i'd love to see this go down as i would love to go to the states. there is already a low fare airline however flying from the US to australia - it only flys from Honolulu however. it's called jetstar and is a qantas offshoot.

@azntg: The service couldn't possibly get worse. I've flown between the US and AU many times (I'm a dual citizen), on both Qantas and United, and the experience has universally been bad. Including trying to feed my peanut-allergic son peanuts when we weren't looking, when there was supposed to be a three-row 'no nut' zone, and then failing to have nut-free meals for him. Two kids, 17 hours on a plane, no food. x.x

While we're at it, let's start allowing foreign airlines to fly domestic routes. And then we can watch the legacy airlines dry up and blow away.

@sue_me: YES!

They need to start Virgin Canada.

The prices of flights to Montreal from LAX are criminal during the summer. I not even going to start on intra-canadian flights

Fly Air New Zealand instead. Cheaper fares, better service, rugby players handing out candy (at least on the flight I was on).

I would love to be able to fly to Aussieland without forking over $2k per person!