• 10,000 passengers travel for less than $10

Low fares airline Jetstar today celebrates 100 days of low fare domestic New Zealand services with almost 10,000 passengers having already flown with the airline for less than $10 one-way.

In a groundbreaking rollout of its every day low fare services since 10 June 2009 to become the second largest carrier in the domestic New Zealand market, almost one in three Jetstar passengers had flown for between $10 and $50 on a one way flight within New Zealand.

To celebrate 100 days of low fare operations in New Zealand, Jetstar is tomorrow offering one passenger on each of its domestic NZ flights a $100 flight voucher for future use on the Jetstar network.

Jetstar Chief Executive Officer Bruce Buchanan said the value based carrier had met a number of key milestones over its inaugural days of domestic New Zealand operations having sustainably grown Qantas Group capacity to record an underlying positive profit before tax position, whilst setting about delivering real benefits for both consumers and NZ tourism.

He said more than 330,000 Kiwis and international passengers have travelled with Jetstar between Auckland, Christchurch, Queenstown and Wellington during its initial 100 day operational period.

“Our successful start-up has signaled an active pursuit of future growth options within the New Zealand market upon consolidating our existing 84 weekly return services in this competitive market. This could include additional aircraft being considered for future introduction and expand our operations,” Mr Buchanan said.

“An additional 43 per cent capacity or over 9300 additional weekly seats was introduced by Jetstar when moving onto previous Qantas operations, including the re-introduction of a daily Christchurch-Wellington service and daily international connections on services connecting to Qantas and Jetstar international flights from Auckland.

“Our successful launch in New Zealand of our Low Fares Finder application at Jetstar.com is assisting Kiwis in their search for the lowest available fares on our network.”

Mr Buchanan said Jetstar had contributed to recent tourism data which shows a 20 per cent growth in Australians visiting New Zealand in July 2009 compared to the same time last year with greater numbers of international visitors flying on our recently introduced domestic New Zealand network after initial arrival.

“Around 80,000 fares for domestic New Zealand flying have been purchased from within Australia, which indicates Jetstar is providing a popular option for Aussies to access a ‘fly-fly’ holiday to multiple destinations within New Zealand as part of one short-break holiday, rather than a traditional fly-drive holiday,” Mr Buchanan said.

“With the support of two additional daily A320 trans Tasman services from Auckland to Sydney and the Gold Coast introduced in April, Jetstar recorded a 75 per cent growth in passenger numbers from Australia to New Zealand last month, when compared to the same time last year.

“Our operations are now well established in the domestic New Zealand market, supported by our 250-strong workforce based across our four ports.”