Well written Steve. As you point out, it’s all about juggling books. The airline does not make the cash profit it makes out to people that it does. Not upgrading an airlines fleet, running fuel and maintenance costs between both of its airlines and a host of other financial tools at its disposal helps it to paint the whatever picture it wants at any given time.
But I digress. Alan Joyce worked for Ansett. There were meetings between himself, Geoff Dixon and a few other players which included another Ansett man, Bill Jauncey. Together they hatched Jetstar, an LCC that was meant to take up all the low yielding routes and leave the cream to Qantas. Profits galore at both end of the spectrum - Qantas a premium service and Jetstar the bogus service. Jauncey once described Joyce as ‘one of the smartest money men you will ever meet’. That is the only compliment I will give Joyce; he has a brilliant business mind. But he is a selfish, self centered, self indulging narcissist. A weak little man with no backbone.
Of late, most of Alan’s “protected species”, faceless men and women who link back beyond the JQ machine to the Ansett days, are leaving, and getting big redundancies of course. Alan is preparing to bail. It’s all in the timing. He is looking after his loyalists as he prepares to exit the beginning. Timing is everything, and Joyce is going to truly leave behind a steaming turd for someone else to massage. Just like Borghetti has done to Scurrah. A steaming pile of nothing that is so brittle that when the next financial, health or oil crisis hits, there will be financial ruin. These airlines are like helium balloons. Just a thin skin protecting an empty void. Joyce is not worth the $100m he has been paid. It is obscene. However the weasels on the Board and the greedy capitalist shareholders love him. And hey, who can stop him??