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Qantas is not taking an unfair share of government travel bookings, a Department of Finance review has found.
The Report of the Review of Australian Government Travel Policies, which was initiated after last year’s Aviation White Paper and completed in December, concluded that government travel bookings broadly matched those by the general public in terms of the split between airlines.
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While most government bookings to and from Canberra in 2023-24 were with Qantas, this was largely down to Qantas operating the most Canberra sectors, the report found.
“For example, the Government flew 85.6 per cent with Qantas on Canberra to Adelaide sector, which is consistent with the public flights available at 84.9 per cent; similarly, Canberra to Brisbane sector is consistent with publicly available flights,” it read.
“For some sectors, such as Canberra to Melbourne and Canberra to Sydney, a higher market share of tickets can be directly driven from these routes being most commonly used for international connections.”
Additionally, on the “Golden Triangle”, the report found that Qantas’ share of government bookings was actually less than the market share of the flights available.
For government travel, Qantas saw 39.1 per cent of bookings for Melbourne-Brisbane, 40.5 per cent for Sydney-Brisbane, and 39.1 per cent for Sydney-Melbourne, despite having 56.6 per cent, 64.6 per cent, and 63.8 per cent of all publicly available flights on those respective routes.
“A common suggestion from entities is that travellers use an airline with a large number of flights on the route to ensure they can change if business circumstances change,” the report read.
“Another potential factor is the reliability of each airline, where passengers with poor experiences have stated their preference for an airline was on the basis of reliability alone.
“Reliability must also be weighed against the availability of other flights, e.g. on high-frequency routes reliability should be less of an operational consideration where the passenger can take a prior or subsequent flight with little impact on government.”
The report found the policy on airline preferencing to be “fit-for-purpose”, but noted there “may be instances where individual travellers are not adhering to the travel policy”.
“To address this, in addition to improving the Policy settings, it is recommended that Finance publish data on airline usage to enable entities to compare their performance with that of other entities,” it read.
“In addition, it is recommended that Finance publish, aggregate information on travel by an entity’s Key Management Personal. These transparency recommendations are intended to provide greater accountability to the public on Commonwealth travel spend.
“Additionally, the Policy will include further guidance on gifts and benefits in relation to air travel.”
