New airline offerings

In a further demonstration of the industry's confidence in the Perth market, several international and domestic carriers are scheduled to increase capacity on their Perth services.

Emirates will increase capacity on its twice-daily service between Perth and Dubai from February 2009 when it introduces a Boeing 777-300ER aircraft onto its evening flight, replacing the Airbus A340-500 on that service.

The upgrade will result in an increase of 100 seats, or almost 20 per cent, a day.

Both the morning and evening services will still offer Emirates premium first-class suites, launched on the Perth morning service in March.

The first-class suites were introduced to the evening flights late last month, catering for the growing demand from business travellers heading to Dubai and beyond.

Also increasing capacity later in the year is Garuda Indonesia, which will be moving to a three-times-a-day service between Perth and Bali in September.

Currently offering a twice-daily service to Bali, Garuda will add a further daily service on all days, except Wednesday, from August 18.

From September 3, the additional Wednesday service will come online, adding a total of 1,248 seats.

The airline will allocate a newly delivered Boeing Next Generation 737-800 aircraft on the route.

Qantas low-cost subsidiary Jetstar is set to launch a daily service between Perth and Singapore in December as grows its focus on the South-East Asia region.

The new service, starting in December this year, is the third international destination to be serviced by Jetstar from Perth, with services to Jakarta and Bali to start in October.

The announcement of the service came as Jetstar also indicated it would set up a crew base in Perth to support its new services.

In launching the new services, then Jetstar chief executive Alan Joyce said Perth had been flagged as an important new port for Jetstar as it looked to expand its Pan Asian blueprint.

"The Perth-Singapore market continues to be the third biggest international route in Australia in terms of traffic and has continued to grow at over 13 per cent over the last year," Mr Joyce said.

Also adding capacity into Singapore is Singapore Airlines, which will increase its Perth to Singapore service to triple dailies during December and January.

This will grow the airline's number of weekly services between the two cities from 18 to 21.

In the domestic market, Tiger Airways has announced it will fly twice daily between Melbourne and Perth from November 1, adding to its current daily schedule.

The low-cost carrier will add three flights a week from October 2 and in November will move to two flights a day.