What changed Beer Baron? Why was International saved?
The cost vs revenue of a new fleet got to a point where the board decided it was worth investing money into. The numbers had clearly not stacked up previously hence why the first 50 were cancelled.
Let’s not forget, they had plenty of other options of where to put the money, options they had preferenced many times over the previous decade. Qantas is no longer just an international airline and the Qantas Group can and has spent their money on all sorts of different projects with various levels of success and failure. (Australian Airlines, Impulse, JQ domestic, JQ International, Network, JQ Asia, Australian Air Express, Red Q, JQ Pacific, JQ Hong Kong, Health Insurance, JQ Japan, Credit Cards, Jets Road Shipping, Alliance, etc.)
Investing in longhaul aircraft is hardly a certainty anymore. There will be return hurdles they need to achieve or the money will go to another entity. Just today Andrew David stated that the next tranch of 787 orders may well go to Jetstar as they have a compelling business case.
I hate that this is our new reality but that’s the way things are now.
Or you can believe the grand conspiracy theory that some posters on here love to (repeatedly) espouse. But how a CEO, that we are told is basically incompetent, could orchestrate and pull off a decade long plan involving numerous department heads, a union president, a shutdown, billions of dollars in losses, no dividends for nearly a decade, a bailout request and a fuel price crash, is a bit hard for me to swallow.