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Industry chiefs tell Asian airlines to work together

Japan Airlines System flight attendants introduce a new-look jetliner at Tokyo's Haneda airport on Thursday as the air carrier started joint operations with Japan Airlines. PHOTO: AFP

Asia-Pacific airlines were urged yesterday to forego competition and increase cooperation with each other amid security threats, rising fuel costs and other woes threatening the aviation industry's future.

During the annual meeting of chief executives of the 17 members of the Association of Asia-Pacific Airlines (AAPA), delegates stressed the need for collaboration among the region's carriers in order to surpass current challenges.

"The issues confronting our industry today are critical and pressing," Lucio Tan, president and chief executive officer of Philippine Airlines, told the AAPA meeting being held in the central Philippine resort island of Mactan.

Tan cited security threats, declining traffic, high insurance premiums and rising fuel costs as among the major challenges facing the industry.

"To effectively address these issues, we need our combined strategies," he said. "We need to direct our efforts towards one goal -- survival. And in order to survive, competition must be replaced by cooperation."

AAPA Director General Richard Stirland noted that while Asia-Pacific airlines faced a grim future due to the fall-out from the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks in the US, the region's carriers were slowly recovering.

Citing the latest statistics from the AAPA, Stirland said passenger traffic among Asian carriers increased by 12.5 percent in September 2002 compared to the same month in the previous year, while cargo traffic expanded by 22.7 percent in the same period.

"The recovery in traffic among Asian carriers started well before September," he said, as airlines showed resiliency and flexibility amid the adversity, the region's economies become increasingly inter-dependent and the need to travel remained "unquenchable."

He, however, acknowledged that the Bali bombing has cast a new pall over the future of the industry, "having struck at one of the most fundamental elements of our business, tourism, and by association at the whole concept of travel."

Philippine Transportation Secretary Leandro Mendoza noted that the crisis has presented an "opportunity to transform airline competition to regional collaboration."

"Cooperation within the industry is imperative to ensure survival, to help rationalize airline capacity, to make better use of aircraft resources and to improve synergies from the combined marketing efforts of airlines," he told delegates.
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