Home » News » “Jetstar has absolutely been a disruptor”: Gareth Evans talks super growth, Japan and rural flights

2 August, 2018

“Jetstar has absolutely been a disruptor”: Gareth Evans talks super growth, Japan and rural flights

Yesterday, we were five hours late for the CAPA Australia Pacific Aviation & Corporate Travel Summit. Don’t ask.

But when we did manage to stumble in, you wouldn’t believe our luck because we almost ran directly into Gareth Evans, CEO of Jetstar as he was walking on stage to for a keynote Q&A.

JimYes

The lively Q&A session, hosted by CAPA executive chairman Peter Harbison, gave us a peek into what the low-cost carrier is up to and what they’ve got planned.

Turns out, they’ve got some big things happening over in Japan, their youthful product model is coming of age, and, not to mention, the possibility of rural flights with the introduction of the airlines new A321 Neo LRs.

Evans even got a slight roasting from Harbison over their unbundled business model.

But we’re getting ahead of ourselves.

Evans, who has been CEO at Jetstar for nine months now and was previously CFO at Qantas and CEO of Qantas international, said that just before he began at the airline, Jetstar was celebrating carrying their 250 millionth passenger. That’s ten times the population of Australia.

That’s huge for an airline that has only been around for 14 years.

“Jetstar has absolutely been a disruptor in this market,” Evans told the almost packed out Wentworth Ballroom at the Sofitel Wentworth in Sydney.
“And the aviation market domestically and internationally in Australia is different as a result of that.

“That growth has been a part of that but you can’t continue to grow forever, you get to a natural plateau and you’ve got to consolidate and get to a position where you can go again. We need to catch up to ourselves and the other side of the can-do culture is the need to finish things.”

Evans admitted the airline has probably come to the end of its period of super growth.

“In our industry, as well as every other industry, everyone’s looking at what the digital disruptors are going to do. The Googles, the Ubers, the Facebooks and the Amazons, how are they going to get in there and change the business model?

“Even though we’re a new model, we are vigilant and we are building strategies and plans to make sure that we don’t get disrupted by somebody whos quicker, bigger, stronger, more agile, more innovative than we are.”

Harbison asked Evans about the airline’s recent order of 18 Airbus A321neo LRs, which the airline will be receiving between 2020 and 2022.

The new aircraft, which Harbison described as being a smaller, narrow-body aircraft that “can fly a long way” were originally slated make trips from Australia’s east coast to Bali, but Evans hinted that there might be more on the cards.

“There are potentially others as well… the first one won’t arrive until 2020 we’re still a couple of years away. As we all know the industry changes quickly so we won’t make any final decisions on that until we get quite a lot closer,” he said.

When asked if those potential destinations may include rural points out of Australia, Evans said:

“This would be the aircraft that can allow us to do that.”

giphy

Another massive question mark hanging over Jetstar, is the potential for the Japanese leg of the company to step more firmly into the international market.

As Harbison pointed out, there is a massive boom market internationally in Japan right now, but Jetstar in Japan has largely focused on domestic flights and some short-haul trips to neighbouring countries.

“We believe there’s a huge opportunity there,” Evans said.

“It takes time but we’ve been profitable now for about two years. Jetstar was recently named in the top 50 brands in Japan, and JAL was only two places ahead of us so our brand presence in that market is considerable and that really gives us a fantastic foundation on which to build.”

“We believe there’s a big opportunity in the long haul market as well… But if Jetstar Japan today went into the long haul market that would be hugely distracting.

“It needs to focus now and build from the platform it’s got so that it can be really strong with the model that its got.”

Advertise with us

Email the Travel Weekly team at traveldesk@travelweekly.com.au

Latest comments

John McDonald says:
August 2, 2018 at 1:26 pm
would suggest Canada 3000, Air Asia X & Scoot are the disruptors. Jetstar is more of a follower.
Log in to Reply

capa gareth evans jetstar jetstar japan