Fronting a Senate inquiry into Commonwealth bilateral air service agreements, Canberra Airport chief executive Stephen Bryon said that airports had been subjected to illegal behaviour by the airline, referencing the unlawful sacking of ground workers during the pandemic.

“As an airport, it makes it very hard to deal with them and encourages … the behaviour where Qantas sees themselves as above the law,” Mr Byron told the inquiry.

“Airports have been subjected to unlawful behavior by Qantas. They seem to act as if they are above the law, above the contracts they sign.

“The real impact is on the customers and we’re seeing that played out now with extremely high and unfair airfares.”

Qantas accused of anti-competitive behaviour

Mr Bryon also argued Qantas structured its route schedule for Jetstar such that it would not be required to compete with Qantas, which was contributing to its outsized profits.

“Competition in the domestic airline industry is mainly driven on price by the low cost carrier and we’re not seeing that competition,” he told the inquiry.

“Qantas has 66 per cent of the market but in fact makes 80 per cent of the profits.”

Due to intense competition in the aviation industry, Mr Bryon said new airlines were not incentivised to enter the market.

“Bonza is a new airline that has entered the market and it can‘t get access to Sydney Airport,” he said.

“In fact, [Bonza] has chosen to fly routes on which Qantas and Virgin don‘t operate. They see the level of competition so significant and the barriers to entry so high.

“90 per cent of their routes don’t have Virgin or Qantas on them.”

According to analysis from the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, the remaining market share is taken up by Virgin at 33.6 per cent, and Rex at 5.3 per cent.

Slot rules ‘ridiculous’: Byron

Rules that allow airlines to have exclusive access to takeoff and landing ‘slots’ if they don’t cancel more than 20 per cent of their flights were also targeted by the Canberra Airport executive.

“The rule is ridiculous for domestic flights,” Mr Byron said.

“For domestic flights it should be 95 per cent versus 5 per cent. It’s a very poor misuse of critical infrastructure.”

“My view is that Qantas have booked into the schedule more flights than they will ordinarily have and what that does is take up a huge number of slots.”

Mr Byron cited examples where Qantas was running two separate flights on the same route five minutes apart, rather than running one larger aircraft, so that the slots were unavailable to a competitor.