Responding to the information contained in the several media reports above about plans to launch a "greenfields" low cost operator one can only agree with Centre for Asia Pacific Aviation managing director Peter Harbison that QF is in mortal danger of cannibalising their own business and following BA's experience with Go.
Added to that if they go ahead with plans to purchase or lease up to 23 new aircraft and setting up a new corporate headquarters all I can see so far is duplication of overheads and infrastructure.
Impulse once heralded as its low cost vehicle it is now regarded as not low cost enough. If the reports are correct an even lower cost model crewed from existing employees using bought or leased new aircraft is going to be the model to counter the inroads of DJ into their market share. But where are the cost savings going to come from?
At present supposed low yielding "leisure" passengers travel on both "low cost" Impulse and main line Qantas flights or a combination of both to reach their destination. They either pay top dollar if they travel at short notice or at peak times or get the opportunities to buy the limited number of "early bird" or promotional fares that effectively fill up otherwise empty seats. Yield management sees to it that aircraft depart with the best mix of passengers and maximise returns.
Take away those so called low yield passengers and put them onto a new "low cost" operation and as far as I can see all you have achieved is duplicated your costs not reduced them. Business passengers will not have to step over rucksacks and sit next to someone reading the Lonely Planet Guide but the number of "mainline" Qantas services would presumably be reduced since they have diverted a reasonable percentage of their customers onto a so called low cost alternative. Why not just separate the "Y" class passengers and make them pay for the in-flight extras as they do on DJ, while giving the others a full service option?
Presumably there are going to be some 737-7-800 and the balance of the 300 fleet available from the QF mainline fleet that will become surplus to requirements. Unless there is an expectation that there is going to be an exponential growth in the overall market of air travellers going to the leisure destinations and or a similar growth in full fare business travellers to replace those lost to the new "low cost" carrier there is going to be a considerable over capacity which of course could be the card QF is playing.
On the face of it, it all shows a considerable lack of foresight to dismantle Impulse as some threads suggest to merely replace it with another "low cost" operation after investing heavily in introducing a new aircraft type and training flight and technical crews to then have a sudden revelation that "Whoops! we have got the wrong model guys", scrap it and start all over again. In essence I suspect the Qantas corporate culture has no real understanding of the meaning or the implementation of the concept of anything "low cost". Stick to your knitting Geoff.
It is all akin to shuffling the deckchairs on the Titanic.