Stephanie Tully: Jetstar CEO on the airline's expansion in the New Zealand market

Jetstar says it's done its homework on the New Zealand market before unveiling its latest —and biggest— expansion in the trans-Tasman market. 

The airline's adding close to 500 thousand seats a year across five of its most popular domestic and trans-Tasman routes. 

The Australian based carrier has operated in New Zealand for 20 years. 

Jetstar Chief Executive Stephanie Tully told Mike Hosking it's always looking to open new markets and expand on existing ones. 

She's seen a shift in preference and demand for Jetstar. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Well, good news for travelers.

Speaker 2 (00:01):
Really.

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Jetstar boosters business, more flights domestically and across the Tasman
Steff Tully is the CEO of Jetstar, of course, and
is whether stiff morning, Hey Mike, how are you very well?
The fact you could get two ministers out onto a windy,
blowy old Wellington runway shows you the politics of this
sort of decision, doesn't I mean, this is a political
game flying people up and down the country.

Speaker 2 (00:22):
Yeah. It was good timing that they were both in
Wellington for our announcement yesterday, so it was they got
to stand in the time I can watch jet south
light Land, which was very good.

Speaker 1 (00:31):
How do you pull the trigger on decisions like this?
How much of this, how much study goes into what's
happening in an economy? And how bullish on that economy
are you that you would do what you've done.

Speaker 2 (00:43):
Yeah. We've obviously been in New Zealand for twenty years now,
sixteen years domestically, and I think what we've seen in
the last couple of years particularly is just we're really
grateful in New Zealanders have given Jetstar a go. So
we've seen some shift in preference for Jetstar we've seen
demand for jet Star, so I think we study it

(01:03):
closely and we look at the opportunities to open your
markets like we yesterday and increased capacity on existing markets,
which is which is good for customers because it's more.

Speaker 1 (01:13):
Choice in sort of related matters in that sense, do
you think you've been missing market share or are you
looking to grow the market.

Speaker 2 (01:21):
Oh, look, I think we're just looking to provide ky
we's a second option. I think you know they deserve
a second option, and Jetstar gives you good lowfares option
where are Operational performance has really improved over the last
couple of years, so we you know, in the last
months we were the best at on transformance and had
the lowest cancelations, yet we're fifty percent cheaper. So I
think it's just, you know, we're really committed to our

(01:43):
own value proposition and making sure that there's a second
choice on many of the routes in New Zealanders to choose.
And I think you know there's opportunity for jet Started
to build new demand, but also to shift share as well.

Speaker 1 (01:57):
Okay, because the problem if you're not growing demand is
that someone's going to bleed here, aren't they? I mean,
at the end of the day, slicing the same pie
into small pieces. Never works.

Speaker 2 (02:06):
Well, yeah, we agree, and I think those opportunities to
still increase that demand. When you look at New Zealand
tourism overall, we're still not back at pre COVID levels,
whereas other countries certainly are. So it's important that we're
all working together, airport's, government, airlines to make sure that
we are stimulating visitation to this country and providing an

(02:28):
environment where you know, there's people wanting to visit New Zealand,
if not once a year, multiple times a year. So
it's particularly Australian. So you know, we see our role
in that as a really important part of that system. Good.

Speaker 1 (02:39):
The broader question for you, and this is this is
you're involved. It's not your fault. The reliability numbers that
came out from the Ministry of I can't remember whoever
does it. The reliability on the Tasman is shocking.

Speaker 2 (02:51):
Why. Yeah, I mean, I think there's a number of
factors that going to reliability and I think we you're committed,
we do. It's a thousand things every day that make
in our unreliable. So we've got lots of people just
working hard to make sure we can do that. International.
You generally have longer sort of turnaround times because you've

(03:11):
obviously got longer borders for processing times. But we're committed
to making that better MIC as well as we have
done domestically as well, and that's the process out there.

Speaker 1 (03:20):
Good stuff. Nice to talk to you is always Steff Tully,
who's the boss of Jitstuff.

Speaker 2 (03:24):
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Speaker 1 (03:28):
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