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Airways $850 for a one way fare between London's Heathrow airport and Singapore. This irrationality is explained through political unrest in Thailand during 2009 and 2010, which have driven tourist numbers down globally and hence ticket prices also. An announcement has also been made considering expanding services to the United States rather than Europe, as this market is an unreliable source of revenue with record losses at the end of 2009 for the airline (International Business Times, 2010). The decrease in tourists is recovering currently, with Australian residents contributing a large portion of travel (TAT News, 2010).

Emirates has seen reduced unit costs for the financial year 2009, with 27.3% of revenue coming from flights within Europe for this airline (The Emirates Group, 2010). Madrid, as mentioned previously, was an added route for this airline, justified through the FIFA World Cup victory and strong demand in forward bookings (AME Info, 2010). Amsterdam was also added in May 2010, boosting cargo carrying capacity through filling holds in passenger aircraft. Emirates is competing directly with KLM and has contributed to passenger numbers significantly, as April 2010 saw a negative figure compared to 2009, and during May this turned to growth.

Italy is a market dominated by Australian residents holidaying and returning from the country, hence the leisure sector is mainly served. During World Youth Day in 2008, arrivals contributed directly to only a small proportion of seats sold. (Tourism Australia, 2010). There are no direct services between the two countries currently, but of what traffic there is, almost all arrivals are from Italy rather than stopover passengers.

Germany was not listed as a top ten country of short-term resident departures for 2009. However, arrival growths have increased and competition is increasing between Germany and Australian routes. Middle-Eastern airlines are expanding routes throughout Germany and to other airports than only Frankfurt.

Demand is growing for Australian flights and is reflected in the complement product of accommodation within Australia, with room occupancy rates higher in March 2010 than the year previous (ABS, 2010).

The following two tables represent the numbers of passengers leaving Australia to European countries through airlines flying into Australia, during the month of May in 2010 and the totals for the calendar year 2009.

Compiled from data in International Airline Activity 2009, Statistical Report, (BITRE 2010)

From the above table it is seen that Qantas Airways passenger numbers only make approximately 10% of the total outbound passengers carried by this airline in 2009

(2.5 million passengers). Much other Qantas traffic is between Hong Kong, New Zealand, Japan, the United States of America and China (BITRE, 2010).

Much European traffic is also carried by foreign Airlines as listed previously, or by code-sharing agreements, with very few European airlines actually flying into Australia themselves.