Hong Kong Airlines is exclusively offering Qantas flights to Hong Kong for connection to its all premium cabin A330 services onwards to London not only for much less than the Qantas fare in business class all the way to London, but less than the same class on Qantas for flights to Hong Kong.

While air fare anomalies are common, and much prized by those who like to seek out such bargains, those that have been thrown up by the introductory offers by Hong Kong Airlines on its new London flights are astonishing.

This is what it is all about.

Hong Kong Airlines will have an all premium daily A330 return flight to London Gatwick from 7 March.

That service will offer two grades of a business class, what it calls Club Premier and Club Classic, with a total of only 116 seats or suites in what is normally a 250 place multi class jet with many airlines, or around 300 seats in a two class Qantas or Jetstar configuration.

Club Premier is a competitor for Qantas long haul business class going on the specifications, while Club Classic comes across as something similar to the sloping sleepers that you find in some Qantas 747s and long haul A330-200s.

The special introductory return fares, available on Hong Kong Airlines including flights by Qantas to and from Hong Kong,  are valid from Perth, Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane for departures up until 30 June.

The Club Classic offer starts from $3520 return and uses economy class services in Qantas between Hong Kong and Australia.

The Club Premier deal starts from $8860 return, and includes Qantas business class to and from Hong Kong.

And while at this stage Hong Kong Airways, which is controlled by the PRC based Hainan Group, which owns Hainan Airlines, hasn’t provided more exact details on the pricing differences between say a Perth and a Melbourne introductory offer, the Qantas web site shows us the magnitude of the gap between the combined offer and a trip flown entirely by Qantas.

For a return flight in May to London Heathrow in Qantas business class  the fare ranged from $15,171 (+$30 credit card fee ripoff ) down to $9715 on what is described as ‘exclusive business class’, which perversely seems to define exclusivity as passing you off on a British Airways flight half way to London anyhow.

If the same dates were flown in May in business class on Qantas between Sydney and Hong Kong only, or less than half the distance to London,  the fare varied between $10,263  down to $5710.

This means punters are looking at something that starts at $3520 in a combination of Qantas economy class and Club Classic using Hong Kong Airlines or $8860 for Qantas business class and Club Premier all the way, which even at its most expensive, is less than the highest Qantas business class fare only as far as Hong Kong, and hey, that’s what you are flying to Hong Kong anyhow!

Somewhere in Qantas someone is probably shaking their head at how journalists don’t understand how it makes perfect sense to gut your own product to give a rival a great chance to stomp all over you.

There are all sorts of below the line fares that carriers can use to combine their services with those of another carrier, even one with which you are in direct competition. And there is nothing to stop airlines stitching together publicly available fares and decided to sell the through trip for whatever they like.

But it does undermine airline credibility when sharp eyed consumers see incredible deals like this, and wonder just how badly they might be ripped off by just going on-line and buying what an airline says is the price, instead of paying a retail travel agent a service fee to do all the sleuthing and booking for you and for a lower total fare than you are likely to get by going on-line.