Steve Creedy, Aviation writer

05jul05

JETSTAR has moved to further open up seat sales to international passengers as it seeks to grab a bigger slice of the inbound market.

The airline last week switched to a ``free sale`` codeshare arrangement that made more seats available to foreign wholesalers and travel agents, and opened up the scheme to international carriers beyond the Qantas Group, British Airways and American Airlines.

Jetstar believes the move will help it boost the proportion of overseas tourists on its flights beyond the current level of 10 per cent.

Codeshare seats had previously been available on a block basis through Qantas.

But once a block of codeshare seats sold out, it registered internationally that no more seats were available on that flight, even if there were still spare seats in other parts of the plane. The new system gives overseas passengers access to all spare inventory and has the added advantage of allowing wholesalers to book bigger groups on Jetstar.

``Having this ability for freesale will overcome a whole series of problems and allow that inventory to be completely available,`` said Jetstar chief executive Alan Joyce.

``And over the past week, we`ve been very impressed with what we`ve been selling.

``The amount of international sales has improved and we`re still promoting this, so we think it can improve even further.``

Mr Joyce said the airline believed the new system - developed jointly by Jetstar Amadeus, Qantas and Navitair - would particularly benefit tourism in areas such as Tasmania, Queensland and Hamilton Island.

He said other proposed changes would make it easier for international tourists to book on the website using their own currencies. There was also an International Air Transport Association facility that would allow wholesalers to book directly with Jetstar using local rather than Australian bank accounts.

The Jetstar boss said the airline also moved yesterday to introduce its digEplayer entertainment units on all nine Airbus A320 aircraft.

``They`re selling well and the uptake has been ahead of where we thought it would be,`` he said.

``That may be the newness of product, so we`re going to keep it under close scrutiny over the next few weeks, but the uptake has been very good, particularly on long sectors.``

The airline is also due to start work on its new A320 maintenance base in Newcastle in the next few weeks.

The base was locked in after Jetstar maintenance engineers endorsed a new enterprise agreement by an 87 per cent majority.