By Roy Weavers

Cairns Airport Pty Ltd (CAPL) welcomes the announcement by Jetstar of 11 new domestic services into Cairns from 28 March 2010.

The additional services include two extra Perth- Cairns and Adelaide-Cairns services per week and an extra daily Sydney – Cairns service.

CAPL Chief Executive Officer, Stephen Gregg, said the announcement is great news for the region and especially for the Tropical North Queensland tourism industry as it comes to the end of one of its most challenging years.

"This is another flow on benefit from our recently concluded negotiations with Jetstar which have resulted in a long-term strategic agreement between Cairns Airport Pty Ltd and the airline," Mr Gregg said.

"Just over a week ago Jetstar announced an additional daily Melbourne - Cairns service. Today’s announcement of extra flights from Perth, Adelaide and Sydney bring the total number of additional flights to 18 per week."

"These services will provide additional domestic seat capacity of around 3200 seats into Cairns."

"This strongly reinforces Jetstar’s confidence in our destination as one of Australia’s most popular. The additional seats will certainly help to address the capacity constraints we have been experiencing in the domestic sector," Mr Gregg said.

"Combined with the re-introduction of Jetstar’s Cairns-Osaka services next April this is very positive news and we look forward to welcoming many more domestic and international Jetstar passengers in 2010."

"We’ve had more good news today with the Federal Government intimating that the Aviation White Paper due for release next week will include incentives for foreign airlines to stopover in Cairns."

Editors Comments – Now this is more the kind of news we want to hear.  Keep them coming.  Well done Jetstar!