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Australian Competition and Consumer Commission Chairman (ACCC) Rod Sims said the regulator is looking into a complaint from Rex Airlines that Qantas is trying to stymie its attempts to become a third player on the country’s major inter-city routes. Regional carrier Rex plans to begin flying on Melbourne-Sydney-Canberra routes from March, directly competing with Qantas, its low-cost arm Jetstar and rival Virgin Australia. Rex last week lodged a complaint with the ACCC, alleging Qantas had started flying some regional routes, a strategy it said was aimed at flooding that market with excess capacity. "We have to see if these are loss-making flights, or not, and of course at the moment ... loss-making is tricky. If they can cover their cash costs, it's pretty hard to say you can't fly there," Sims said Monday. Sims said he was more focused on ensuring Rex continues to have access to landing slots on the major inter-city routes, a development that has been enabled by reduced flights during the coronavirus pandemic. “We’ve got to make sure those slots are available in the longer term, because having three players would provide more competition,” Sims said. Qantas carried 75% of all domestic passengers in September, compared with 60% a year ago, according to a recent ACCC report, albeit with reduced overall numbers because of the coronavirus pandemic.<br/>

Qatar Airways has escaped being penalised after seven people who arrived in Hong Kong on consecutive flights tested positive for Covid-19, raising questions about a loophole in the way airlines are assessed for punishment if they bring in sick passengers. The Doha-based carrier appears to have got away on a technicality. Under Hong Kong’s rules, an airline may be banned from flying to the city for two weeks if two consecutive flights from the same destination bring a combined three or more passengers who test positive for Covid-19 at the airport’s Temporary Specimen Collection Centre (TSCC). Earlier this month, seven passengers on consecutive Qatar Airways flights were tested upon arrival and found to be infected, but the airline was not penalised. The reason? Some of the passengers’ test results did not come on the day they arrived, and by the time they learned they were positive, some were no longer at the airport, as they had been moved to spend the night at the airport’s holding hotel. If all six results had come on the same day while the passengers were still at the airport, a ban on Qatar would have been triggered, according to Department of Health rules. The seventh infected passenger was a toddler, whose test result took longer to be confirmed. The Department of Health confirmed that those who tested positive for the coronavirus were sent to hospital from the airport and the holding hotel, but declined to provide more details. It said in a statement that no Qatar Airways flight since December 4 had met “established criteria” for it to be banned from landing in Hong Kong.<br/>