What sort of business plan is Alan using?
Mr Joyce is a child of the financially engineered airline fraternity. Alchemy is an apt description.
As fixed cost is fixed and changes not substantially no matter what the airline model, off balance sheet leasing and driving down staff costs were two planks in the model. Load factors need to be consistently above 80% and yield is tricky to capture. The model is demand elastic relative to a more traditional structure as the revenue stream is very sensitive to price change: The traditional airline is not as susceptible. Jetstar had a role but not what Mr Joyce and Leigh Clifford hoped.
Qantas imagined not only using leverage against the staff but effectively replacing the terms of employment entirely. Perhaps 'work choices' encouraged them, who knows!
They have benefited personally very handsomely.
They need a new fleet, they are signatories to IATA's CO2 reduction plan, seeing 1.5% annual reduction to 2020 and further reduction into carbon neutral. Other than a grounding and lock out a new fleet is the only real way to achieve this given their route profile.
They spent nearly $1.75 billion on share buy backs and capital returns. Curiously their own options vested at the same time...That is a big start for a new fleet, but given the staff contract negotiations start soon it is wash, rinse and......repeat! IR first
Any sort of real regulatory oversight would at least investigate the correlation...