Andy Jack: Competition means transtasman air traveller sitting pretty

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There has been a fair bit of talk about travel industry layoffs and how they might affect transtasman prices. For the price-conscious business traveller, it can be daunting when one of the world's leading airlines is facing an adverse situation - but the good news is that transtasman travel is one of the most competitive routes.

Cheap airfares shouldn't be going anywhere, any time soon, for business and leisure travellers.

Travel is a highly competitive industry with many consumers focused on price and finding the best airfares in the market. This constant demand for competitive price points, particularly for short-haul flights, means airlines are under a huge amount of pressure to deliver these low airfares to the market to create the demand to justify operating a particular route.

The positive news that occurs when an airline faces an adverse situation is that it forces the company to analyse where its money is coming from and where they are best to reinvest.

This in turn forces new opportunities to be opened up and, because of the nature of the market, how they react can only be in the best interest of consumers.

The same thing applies when an airline announces a change in route. While it may have an adverse effect initially, it also opens up new options with airlines pro-actively looking at alternative routes and growth markets for leisure and business travellers.

An example of this is Qantas forging a code-share agreement with China Southern, Asia's largest airline and, most recently, the announcement regarding Qantas partnering with Bangkok Airways, effectively increasing capacity to these destinations and providing more options to consumers.

New Zealanders are lucky to have multiple options flying to ports all across Australia on a daily basis - with a choice of both full-service and low-cost carriers. At the end of the day, increasing competition between airlines results only in good things for the consumer.