The airline's Australia and New Zealand chief executive David Hall told the Otago Daily Times yesterday the transtasman was "a challenging market" , but the Queenstown service was performing well.
The Queenstown Airport Corporation announced last week a record 1,047,044 scheduled passengers passed through the terminal in the year ending June 30.
Mr Hall said Jetstar carried 330,000 passengers into Queenstown in the same period, up 40% on the previous year. He expected to see growth continue into this year with the full effect of the transtasman services evident.
"We reckon we'll be up certainly double-digit growth into 380,000 to 390,000 passengers coming in.
"You're seeing transtasman double with the new services, you're seeing domestic increase with our weekly Wellington service now, you've got 17 out of Auckland and five or so from Christchurch, so the market's responding well."
Mr Hall said Queenstown played to the core of Jetstar as a leisure brand, "so we will grow this market over time and to be able to grow that means you've got a good competitive position, we maintain our low-fares philosophy and we can stimulate demand, and we can see that in the numbers.
"Our strategy is not to come in and cannibalise other carriers.
"Through low fares, we're all about stimulating the market; getting people travelling more often to more destinations more frequently is really what we're all about."
The airline began flying into Queenstown Airport in June 2009. It now operates 33 services a week in and out of Queenstown - 28 domestic and five transtasman.
Asked if Jetstar planned to answer Air New Zealand's plan to boost capacity on direct air services between Auckland and Queenstown by nearly a third this summer, Mr Hall said the domestic market was "a little bit patchy" with seasonal adjustments likely on some connections depending on demand.
However, "the Wellington market is responding well to low-fare stimulation, which is good. Auckland we do 16 services a week, so if the demand is there we will continue to grow that."
