Australia Moves Closer to Approving ANA–Singapore Airlines Joint Venture

DALLAS — Australia's competition regulator has moved closer to approving deeper cooperation between All Nippon Airways (ANA, NH) and Singapore Airlines (SIA, SQ) on passenger services between Australia and Japan.

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) issued a draft determination on July 23, proposing to authorise specified joint-venture conduct for five years. That would allow the airlines to share revenue and coordinate elements including fares, schedules, inventory, sales, marketing, and customer handling on covered services.

The decision is not yet a final approval. An interim authorisation that took effect immediately lets ANA and Singapore Airlines discuss and plan the cooperation, but expressly prevents them from implementing it while the substantive application remains under review.

That distinction matters for passengers: no new Australia–Japan joint fare, schedule change, or capacity increase has been approved for sale as a result of the draft alone.

What the Proposed Joint Venture Would Cover

At the center of the agreement is a revenue-sharing model for selected routes. The partners intend to allocate passenger revenue partly in proportion to each carrier's production of available seat kilometers, with adjustments contemplated for base-period activity, standard capacity, and growth.

The objective is “metal neutrality.” In airline-alliance language, that means the partners would seek to become financially indifferent to whether an eligible passenger travels on an ANA-operated aircraft or a Singapore Airlines-operated itinerary covered by the revenue pool.

That alignment would go substantially beyond the carriers' existing codeshare. ANA and Singapore Airlines could jointly plan trunk-route capacity, coordinate fares and fare rules, exchange inventory-management information, align some ancillary-service policies, and develop common sales and marketing activity. They would retain separate brands.

The proposal also covers passenger-facing work such as better-timed connections, through check-in, baggage tracing and claims handling, staff training, and possible alignment of airport processes and supporting information technology. Scoot (TR), Singapore Airlines' low-cost subsidiary, is not included in the proposed conduct.

Where the Airlines Overlap

ANA operates nonstop service from Sydney Airport (SYD) to Tokyo Haneda Airport (HND) daily. The ACCC also lists ANA's Perth Airport (PER)–Tokyo Narita Airport (NRT) service as seasonal, operating from December through March. The regulator says ANA is scheduled to increase Perth–Narita from three weekly flights to daily service from December 2026.

Singapore Airlines does not fly nonstop between Australia and Japan. It carries passengers over Singapore Changi Airport (SIN), linking Adelaide, Brisbane, Cairns, Darwin, Melbourne, Perth, and Sydney with its Japan network.

The difference between those operations is central to the ACCC's preliminary assessment. On Sydney–Tokyo, ANA's nonstop competitors are Qantas (QF) and Japan Airlines (JAL, JL). On Perth–Tokyo, the regulator considers a nonstop flight materially more convenient than a one-stop itinerary and therefore does not treat Singapore Airlines' connecting service as a close substitute.

For overlapping one-stop journeys to cities such as Osaka, Nagoya, Fukuoka, and Sapporo, the ACCC identified numerous competing connections through hubs including Hong Kong, Seoul, Kuala Lumpur, Bangkok, Manila, and Taipei. It therefore concluded that the partners would remain constrained by established airlines even after they stopped competing independently on covered itineraries.

The ACCC Is Not Predicting Lower Fares

The draft is supportive, but its benefit assessment is narrower than the airlines' application.

ANA and Singapore Airlines argued that joint network planning could create 35,000 to 40,000 additional itinerary combinations, an increase of 115% to 125%. The ACCC concluded that a significant share of those combinations would already become available through the carriers' existing Singapore–Japan joint venture, so it described the Australia-specific itinerary benefit as limited.

The regulator was more positive about coordinated transfers, through check-in, baggage handling, and customer service. It also said deeper frequent-flyer alignment could create additional earning and redemption opportunities, although the extent of that benefit remains unclear.

The airlines further argued that revenue sharing could remove “double marginalisation,” which can occur when two carriers separately add markups to complementary flight segments. The ACCC said such alignment can create an incentive to lower the combined fare, but it was not satisfied that the evidence established a real chance of lower fares in this case.

Japan Airlines raised a separate concern: the partners had not made strict commitments to maintain direct capacity or flight frequency and could theoretically shift capacity toward indirect services. JAL asked the regulator to condition approval on maintaining and expanding capacity. The ACCC's draft instead proposes authorisation without that condition, finding that rival nonstop and one-stop airlines should continue constraining the partners.

The Australian Travel Industry Association also asked whether the agreement reached travel-agent commissions and other agency terms. The applicants told the regulator that coordination or information sharing on agency arrangements is outside the proposed conduct.

Where This Sits Between an Interline and a Merger

Airline partnerships form a ladder of increasing commercial integration, and the ANA–Singapore Airlines proposal sits near its top.

Airways recently covered a simpler example at the first step of that ladder: the Southwest Airlines–Singapore Airlines interline agreement permits connecting tickets and through-checked baggage but does not create joint pricing or revenue sharing.

The proposed Australia–Japan venture is much deeper. It seeks statutory protection for specified coordination that could otherwise raise concerns under Australia's prohibitions on cartel conduct and anticompetitive agreements. Yet it stops short of combining the two companies.

That model is especially important in international aviation. The International Civil Aviation Organization says full-scale cross-border airline mergers remain relatively rare because bilateral air-service agreements often require airlines to preserve national ownership and control. Competition law adds another barrier when consolidation could weaken rivalry.

The International Air Transport Association reached a similar conclusion in a 2025 review of airline merger-and-acquisition activity. It found that 71% of disclosed transactions from 2020 through 2025 were domestic and said the preference for strategic partnerships over full takeovers likely reflects national ownership laws, bilateral agreements, regulatory conditions, and political sensitivities.

A metal-neutral joint venture can therefore reproduce part of a merger's network economics—joint pricing, coordinated capacity, and shared revenue—without transferring ownership. The tradeoff is continuing regulatory oversight: authorisation is limited to specified conduct and a defined term, and the regulator can revisit the balance of consumer benefit and competitive harm.

Approval Is Not Automatic

The same ACCC rejected a superficially similar proposal in the same geographic market five years ago.

In September 2021, the regulator denied Qantas and Japan Airlines permission to coordinate Australia–Japan services. Before the pandemic, those airline groups carried about 85% of passengers between the two countries, were each other's closest competitors on Sydney–Tokyo, and were the only nonstop operators on Melbourne–Tokyo.

The current ANA–Singapore Airlines application presents a different competitive structure. Singapore Airlines has no nonstop Australia–Japan flight, while ANA faces Qantas and JAL on Sydney–Tokyo and multiple competitors across the broader connecting market. The favorable draft determination is therefore based on limited overlap, not on a general preference for airline alliances.

A Six-Year Path Through Multiple Regulators

ANA and Singapore Airlines first signed their joint-venture framework in January 2020, identifying Australia, India, Indonesia, and Malaysia as markets for possible expansion beyond Singapore–Japan.

Singapore's competition regulator granted conditional approval in March 2025 for the carriers' overlapping Singapore–Japan services. The airlines then launched joint fares and revenue-sharing flights for travel from September 2025.

Their Australian application followed on March 5, 2026. The six-year sequence shows how a cross-border airline joint venture can expand market by market while each jurisdiction considers the routes and competitive overlaps within its own remit.

The ACCC is accepting submissions and requests for a pre-decision conference until August 7. Its current public-register timetable places a final determination in August or September.

Until then, the carriers may prepare the commercial machinery behind the partnership, but they cannot switch on Australia-specific coordination. The final decision—and any changes after consultation—will determine how far the alliance can move from codesharing toward a fully coordinated Australia–Japan business.