No matter how you twist it QF know boats when it comes to hedging fuel.
As for International it’s easy to sit in a money machine 737 between ML and SY and say “just cut it” whilst imagining more fortunate senior colleagues having a heart attack the moment they get the email (twisted but true). Reality is a lot of business connections and on carriage depend on it. Cutting it would have some impact on domestic.
Often loss making parts of the business can be covered by the domestic operation, flyer scheme/catering or other ventures like at QF. Unfortunately, in either total desperation or incredible naivety a portion of Velocity was sold off to Afinity Partners. Velocity is truely the Golden Goose.
I think previous CEO’s might have had the horse or ego before the cart when it came to 777/330. Would have been better to have built upon the
VB 737’s and at the right moment (B787 announcement) paid a fraction for one of these new generation widebodies (Airbus or Boeing). I’d say the way forward would have been 737-900 with layflat business and double the frequency on the transcon. Interestingly enough that’s what the Max 10 will be no doubt doing. The question will be if the travelling public will trust it? Finally did the new CEO strike a massive discount for B787’s in the renegotiation a few months back? Hope so.