Why not all roll the dice and fly Garuda, or Korean, may not make it, but at least it was cheap.
Don, do agree with your point, but you may be surpised how much the industry moved on whilst Qantas went to war with itself (staff)
The problem with Qantas is very much self induced.
The modern airline 'manager' comes from a very broad discipline of 'management'.
To make these MBA style course widely accepted, the underlying tone, driven to a degree by the prevalence of accounting subjects is that COST is the one thing that management can easily focus on. So in they come, with the MBA and drive cost down, it is easily identifiable, oftentimes is human (labour) and for managers without real industry insight it becomes a norm; find a cost, reduce it. For what it is worth, we suspect that Qantas is readying itself for the next proxy war with staff; pilots.
The Low Fare Airline really was the accountant driven business. Forgive me if I am wrong but haven't all JQ CEO's been accountants?
The consumer bombarded with the same messages on price, expects (from a consumer point of view) the same 'value' at lesser price. We all demand cheap Chinese goods then complain when there are no real jobs left! ( I digress)
The problem with this is
logically it cannot proceed below a given level (fixed cost) so by the time the 'management' re-orientate to growing revenue again (value) it is often too late.
This is the modern corporate cycle. Airlines with their high fixed cost are not necessarily well suited to this approach. Sadly though the 'management' class all read the same textbook.
Real good airline management keeps control of unit costs but equally focuses on driving revenue growth and building a brand value.