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Webjet today announced that it has entered into a series of agreements which will lead to the commencement of Operations in North America in early 2010.

Commenting, Webjet MD David Clarke said "We are excited to advise, that after an extensive analysis of off shore regions as foreshadowed in our ASX announcement of 06 August 2009, we have completed agreements which will see WEBJET commence operations on WEBJET.COM early next year.

The key components of this are:

• The operation will take the form of a 50% joint venture in conjunction with Mathias Friess, formerly General Manager Global Sales and Distribution of the Virgin Blue Group of Airlines and previously Head of Sales North America for Lufthansa. He also has extensive knowledge of the Latin America markets gathered during his tenure as Country Manager for Argentina, Chile and Uruguay for Lufthansa.
• The joint venture will acquire the business assets but no liabilities of two existing websites Farecrawler.com and Whentofly.com
• Webjet's equity and funding will be limited to $1million dollars US with appropriate currency protections
• Webjet.com will focus on long haul leisure travel from North America to Australia and the Pacific, Europe, Latin America and Asia.
• The joint venture will initially be constructed as close as possible to a virtual organisation to ensure lowest possible fixed costs.

The President and CEO will be Mathias Friess and the Chairman David Clarke. Mathias has a global top level understanding of travel marketing and distribution with a deep knowledge of the North America market as well as the European, Latin America, and Asia/Pacific regions and is uniquely placed from his Australian experience to capitalize on the Webjet brand and technology expertise which has placed Webjet as Australia's number 1 online travel agency.

We further consider that although full recovery from the GFC is incomplete, the USA market now represents a base line of compelling opportunity with major growth opportunities as global travel markets gradually recover.

We are under no illusions about the size of the challenges in North America, and our business plan which will include our unique Stay n Pay hotel offering will be conservatively managed with great caution and realism and development will be considered and commensurate with prudential risk management.

This will also allow Webjet to add additional values to our valued Australian Airlines associations where we can tap into USA originating business in a cost effective manner.