Until World War II In 1934,
Qantas and Britain's
Imperial Airways (a forerunner of
British Airways) formed a new company, Qantas Empire Airways Limited (QEA), Air transport was encouraged both with direct subsidies and with mail contracts. Immediately before the start of the war, more than half of all airline passenger and freight miles were subsidised. However, after 1939 and especially after Japan's invasion of the islands to the north in 1941, civil aviation was sacrificed to military needs. During the war, most of the Qantas fleet of ten was taken over by the Australian government for war service and enemy action and accidents destroyed half of the fleet. The government declined. Later that year, ANA was acquired by the much smaller
Ansett Airways, and the duopoly would continue for the next four decades.
Airbus A380 taking off at
Sydney Airport Deregulation Deregulation of aviation in Australia commenced in the late 1980s. In 1986 Trans-Australia Airlines was renamed Australian Airlines, which merged in September 1992 with Qantas. Qantas was gradually
privatised between 1993 and 1997. The legislation allowing privatisation requires Qantas to be at least 51% owned by Australian shareholders. In 1988, the Australian Government formed the
Federal Airports Corporation (FAC), placing 22 airports around the nation under its operational control. In April 1994, the Government announced that all airports operated by FAC would be privatised in several phases.
Virgin Australia was launched as Virgin Blue in August 2000. The timing of Virgin Blue's entry into the Australian market was fortuitous as it was able to fill the vacuum created by the collapse of Ansett Australia in September 2001. In the following years, Virgin Australia became a challenger to Qantas. Both companies launched low-cost subsidiaries: Qantas formed
Jetstar in 2003 and Virgin acquired
Tigerair Australia in 2013. ==Statistics==