Australia’s Jetstar will consider adopting a franchise system to expand in Southeast Asia if ASEAN adopts an “open skies” policy next year, it was reported Tuesday.
The Australian Financial Review said flights within the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) were due to be deregulated next year, opening up one of the world’s fastest growing aviation markets.
But it said wholly-owned Jetstar subsidiaries could not benefit from the agreement as they would be regarded as foreign owned, forcing Qantas’s discount offshoot to instead examine a franchise system.
Jetstar chief executive Alan Joyce told the newspaper that the airline would consider taking minority stakes in airlines throughout the region as a means of expanding its brand.
Joyce compared Jetstar’s growth potential in Asia to that of Southwest Airlines in the United States and Ryanair in Europe before trade liberalisation in their respective markets.
“Before that, no one had even heard of them,” he said.
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