It will be interesting to see what the Government does but it would be a surprise if they bail them out. If the shareholders won't do it then I can't see the Government being levered into doing it to keep the air fare. Next will be Airports, Travel Agents, Cruise Ship companies and other businesses that consider themselves essential services and critical to the economy. Post Ansett it took about 12 months for there to be a reasonable presence from
VB at the time but at no stage did they provide any real competition to QF particularly in Business Class.
In regards to not being like Ansett lets see they have:
- A complicated and mixed up fleet which evolved for VB out of a single type - Tick
- Shareholders that don't want to foot the bill - Tick
- I think if you do a comparison on the Pilots pays they will be very similar although the AN Pilots were far more flexible on work rules than the VA ones are. - Tick
- And lastly they both put out stories on why they should keep going once they lost the customers confidence. AN through the 767 Fiasco and VA through putting in the media that they need $1.4 B to survive- Tick
- Both had trigger events to complete the fall. AN had 9/11 and VA has COVID-19 - Double Tick
All in all it will be interesting to watch. The issue now is that COVID-19 is here to stay so the opening up of borders may not take 3 months which VA needs to keep going it looks more like 9 months to a year. Overall a bleak time for the world's economies. So much for retiring for most of us anytime soon.