Qantas Airways in Legal Spat, Perth - Paris Route On Hold

A legal spat with Perth Airport has put Qantas' plans for a historic new route to fly direct from Perth to Paris.

Alan Joyce, the airline's chief executive officer said legal action brought by the airport seeking millions in allegedly unpaid service fees from Qantas had made launching the new service 'inappropriate'. However, a spokesperson for Perth Airport denied that the airline was facing legal issues that stopped it from commencing the new route.

He said Perth Airport has secured pricing agreements from 23 out of 24 airlines which operate at the airport, which is evidenced in their approach to pricing is both reasonable and fair.

Joyce said the airline would wait for a year after Perth-London opened to see how it performed. "We want to see if we could make money and we are at that stage now. However, we do have to approve new aircraft to do it, and unfortunately, while we have a legal case going on with the (Perth) airport, which we do at the moment, it would be inappropriate. I don't think our shareholders would be happy with us ordering aircraft to invest at an airport where we don't have certainty about the future and about the charges."

Without directly commenting on the lawsuit, the airline chief said Qantas was being hampered by a general issue of being overcharged by airports for the use of their facilities. In December 2018, the Perth Airport sued Qantas, alleging it had charged the airline $27.8 million to use the airport between July and October of 2018, but the airline had only paid $16.5 million. Joyce called for an independent party to oversee the spat as a 'last resort independent arbitration'.

In its bid, Qantas also claimed that the airport was putting Western Australia tourism at risk by increasing the cost of using Perth Airport by 38 per cent over a seven-year period.