On board the historical flight JQ29 was Jetstar CEO Alan Joyce, who said the inaugural flight marked the Australian low-cost carrier's international expansion.

Yesterday afternoon, another new route, from Sydney to Phuket, was launched.

Next week Vietnam's Ho Chi Minh City will officially be added to the list of new destinations, which will include Osaka and Nagoya in Japan, the Indonesian island of Bali, and Hawaii's Honolulu.

Jetstar, which is managed independently, currently contributes less than 10 per cent of Qantas Group's total revenue, but Joyce hopes that figure will more than double to 22 per cent next year.

Domestically, Jetstar operates 40 per cent of the company's Australian flights. Qantas Group chairwoman Margaret Jackson said Jetstar complemented Qantas' existing routes by targeting leisure travellers.

One of the first airlines to move to Suvarnabhumi Airport, Jetstar plans to use Thailand as a base for its future low-cost flights to Europe, said Joyce. The airline would fly to any airport on the basis of competitive arrangements in terms of pricing and facilities in order to keep Jetstar's ticket price as low as possible.

But Jetstar's notion of value-based travelling is not all about sitting in perpendicular seats in stuffy cabins, chewing soggy sandwiches. It has introduced its StarClass, which offers all the amenities

of business class - from the generous 38-inch seats to video-on-demand - at the price of a conventional airline's economy class.

A StarClass one-way ticket from Melbourne to Bangkok currently costs Bt8,500, whereas Qantas' Sydney-Bangkok (there is no direct Melbourne-Bangkok flight) economy-class flight is priced at 1,219 Australian dollars or Bt34,602 - a boon for Melbourne.

Jetstar's economy-class passengers can choose from four in-flight packages: Feed Me, Comfort Me, Entertain Me and a combination of the Comfort Me package with a portable video-on-demand player, with prices ranging from $7 (Bt199) to $25 (Bt711).

Since the Bali bombing, the number of Australian tourists to Thailand, particularly to Phuket and Koh Samui, has increased by 49 per cent. However, the number of Thai tourists to Australia has declined by 5 per cent to 76,000 this year.

Some 5.799 million passengers flew with Jetstar in the year to June 30. The airline reported a revenue seat factor of 74 per cent for the same period.

Ki Nan Tsui 

The Nation