Qantas Airways to drop chauffeur service for U.S.

Australia’s flagship carrier Qantas Airways recently announced it will completely do away with the complimentary limousine service being provided until now to premium customers to/from the United States. The dropping of free limo service means that customers traveling in first class and business class to/from U.S. will now have to make their own travel arrangements to the airport starting from July onwards.

Earlier, Qantas Airways had introduced this complimentary limo service for its premium customers in 2013. It was implemented as part of its partnership with Emirates Airlines. The airline said that the service will not be provided to the customers taking flights to/from Dallas/Fort Worth and Los Angeles. The reason cited behind this decision is low take-up. The airline however said that the customers from U.S. who book their tickets until June 9 for travel through June 30 will continue to get free limo transfer.

The premium customers in other destinations will though continue to be provided limousine transfer service free of cost. Qantas Airways said that the customers booking flights between New Zealand and Australia will be provided this service. The passengers traveling to/from London Heathrow and Dubai will also get the service. The airline said that the take-up of the service in these destinations is nearly four times higher than that in the United States.

A spokesman of Qantas Airways said that by cutting the service because of low take-up it will rather make investments in other things that are considered of more value to its customers.

According to the airline, this move is part of its efforts to make cost cuttings by $2 billion over a period of 3 years. This move has also come at a time when both Virgin Australia and Qantas Airways are on the verge of limiting their domestic capacity growth while grappling to regain pricing power and offset losses that could amount to a total of $1 billion during this financial year.

Qantas Airways had announced late in May this year that it will curtail its domestic capacity growth in wake of mounting losses. The airline released its April traffic results recently saying that it couldn’t earn sufficient revenues on Easter holiday, thus resulting in a downslide of 2.6 percent in domestic traffic.

Other Australian carriers like Virgin Australia and Tigerair Australia are also striving hard to boost revenues on their respective domestic mainline traffic fronts and making necessary operational changes in this regard.