Turkish Delight?

Welcome back to the Cafe, everyone. Got a treat to accompany your morning coffee today - a bit of Turkish Delight.

No, not the pink, rosy-flavoured treat, but new direct flights between Sydney and Istanbul on Turkish Airlines. The Australian Federal Government has reportedly agreed to an air-services deal with Turkey which would allow TK and QF to go head-to-head on this route.

Of course, "head-to-head" may be a bit of a misnomer as Qantas hasn't flown to Istanbul since it was Constantinople and reportedly has no plans to any time soon. But that hasn't stopped Qantas execs from complaining about this new agreement citing the usual story about their profitability suffering due to more competition. Apparently there are only 60,000 passengers annually flying between Australia and Turkey, so I really don't think this is much yield for QF to be missing out on.

I have to say that I'm not quite sure that another Middle Eastern carrier joining the fray at Kingsford-Smith is going to do much good, what with Etihad, Emirates and Qatar all now flying into Sydney. Turkish is initially proposing only 3 flights per week, so it's not like they're going to dominate the market like Emirates has tried to do. Having never flown TK myself I have no idea how good their product is, but I'm pretty sure that the aforementioned 3 airlines' products are pretty tough to beat in any case.

Regardless, if Turkish does come to Sydney I am sure that Qantas will again roll out the sentiment that too much competition is a bad thing for Australia and Australian travellers. Having had my own personal costs for flying to the US drop by 50% in the time since V Australia and Delta have begun flying the California-Australia routes I can't say I'm in agreement.

If this is is really about competition from a consumer standpoint, this argument never has and never will stack up. If it's really about protecting Qantas' profits, then so be it, we should not begrudge a company from making money as after all that's what business is all about. But it should be done for the right reasons and not keep saying "anti-competitive" each time someone else tries to do things better or different.

(Thanks to the SMH Business Day for some facts noted in the above. Link to story: http://www.smh.com.au/business/deal-adds-turkey-to-qantas-competitors-20100221-onv9.html)

EXTRA SHOT FOR THE DAY - Webjet and Amex make things easy

(Barista's disclaimer: I used to work for Amex and and am a personal friend of the Membership Rewards director for Australia. My opinion on this however is as a traveller rather than being a "plant" for either company but just so everyone's clear on my position!)

Coming from literally nowhere, in just about 5 years Webjet has become a major player in the online travel space in Australia and now are attempting to launch in the US later this year. Good luck on that one guys...not like there aren't a million other online travel agencies all vying for the US market...but I digress.

I just booked a trip on Webjet to Fiji for a family holiday and was quite pleased to be able to use Amex Membership Rewards points to pay for part of my trip. Didn't matter which airline (V Australia in case anyone's wondering - the onboard experience review coming in a July edition of the Cafe!) I chose nor what flights I booked - no blackouts, no restrictions. Finally - an easy to use way to burn up points without having to have "enough" to get the full cost of a trip covered. I was able to split the cost of the flights between MR points and charged the rest to my card. Couldn't have been easier. Well done Webjet and Amex. Now if only Webjet would only lose that silly logo...