In Reply to: This is fantastic for Bali! posted by bingo on Wednesday, 26. July 2006 at 19:25 Bali Time:
Whilst I agree these airfares are great and anything helps in Bali's recovery, if anyone thinks this is the turning point for Bali you have rocks in your head. It will take a lot more than cheap INTRODUCTORY flights from a new airline to bring Bali back to the good old days. Peoples attitudes and mindset has to be changed, it doesn,t matter what cheap airfares are on offer, people still have to feel comfortable in going back or in a lot of cases for the first time. Just remember that Jetstar is basically taking over the now defunct Australian airlines runs so there will be no major increase in flight numbers to Bali from Australia. Jetstar pulled the same low introductory airfare costs when they first started domestically. Thankfully we have virgin to help keep domestic fares reasonable by way of competition at the moment. Unfortunately there is no virgin on the horizon for Bali in the foreseeable future. I have friends who booked very cheap fares yesterday, today those fares are gone, still heaps of seats available on the same flights but todays best price is around $1000 return ex Sydney. Of all the destinations offered by jetstar's offer yesterday it would be interesting to know what destinations were the most heavily booked. Somehow I think Bali would be near the bottom of the list. As I said it's more to do with mindset than airfares. Good luck to all who have booked and enjoy your stay. I also will be returning next year but Bali's recovery will take more than a few cheap seats in order to be acieved.