Doesn’t seem all that efficient to me when you could have simply quarantined the back half of an A330 and declared it a ‘pay for stuff as you go’ zone.
Qantas had a fully depreciated 734 fleet. Liquid overhaul(paint) and marketing
'Qantaslite'.
Hire new cabin crew, use the same 'back of office' functions and all of a sudden you had product differentiation, a new product at that and most of the costs absorbed by the pre-privatisation Qantas (taxpayer). Efficent and almost seamless in the Qantas system. New pilot contracts if you want, but given they already flew the aircraft, why bother when the cost is already 'sunk'.
Ideology is rarely found in the same room as common sense.
-Anon