Air Australia takes over from Strategic

"A breath of fresh air" is how a re-branded airline is describing itself after launching in Brisbane today.

Air Australia is the new brand for Stategic Airways as of November 15; and airline managing director and CEO Michael James  (pictured at the launch) believes that this new airline will offer passengers greater choice when travelling.

“I don’t need to talk about how turbulent and competitive this industry is after what we have seen over the past week,” he said.

“What I can tell you is that Air Australia be highly competitive and will give customers who choose to fly with us the choice of what they want when it comes to travelling on a low cost carrier.

“We have a first-bag-free service which no other low cost carrier in Australia provides, because we know that when you travel with family, especially children you can not fit it all into carry-on luggage.

“So by offering the first bag free we are hoping that we will be able to entice more family’s to travel with us to the destinations that we will be going to.”

The airline currently flies to Phuket and Bali from Brisbane and Melbourne but that is about to change as it now has licences to fly into China and the USA via Hawaii, with mainland US to open up in the future.

Queensland state Attorney General Paul Lucas, who attended the launch said that this airline was great for Queensland as it would open up the state to more tourism opportunities and more jobs.

“With the majority of maintenance taking place here in Brisbane, we will see a large number of skilled employees working on an Queensland-owned business,” he said.

“Queensland also has some of the busiest airports in the country and, with Air Australia flying, the number of tourists coming to enjoy Queensland will only help this airline grow.”

Airline CEO James also hinted that the airline would be offering a loyalty program for its passengers, but the details for this plan will not be released until they are comfortable that the model that the airline has is the right one.

“We do have plans for this down the track but it will be more of a fly-1-times-get-one-free type of program,” said James.

They are things that we will look at as the airline matures but for now we want to focus on providing customers with a new choice of airline to fly.”