Virgin has proven that low cost does not work in Australia.
It was not started by airline executives with a solid business plan but in fact, by 2 secondhand plane salesmen who managed to sell the idea to get start up money on a bar napkin.
When it was floated the original players pulled out their little goldmines and couldn’t give a toss from then on.
The only reason that Virgin survived was that the last Liberal government allowed Ansett to fall .
There were no new ideas or brilliant management types, just low class service for not so low a cost , and fares went up after Ansett failed.
The attempted transformation from a pig’s ear into a silk purse just cost a lot of money and still produced share prices that have not seen more than a quarter of the issue price and at times 1/20 of issue.
What was the last share price ( when you could buy) ?
Penny stock prices they call it in the US, the stuff for mug punters to buy.
The reason for this was because it was grossly over valued at the float and people bought the hype.
Virgin is a dead business, there is no point in dragging the saga on and another operator will take over without the self inflicted debt that a Virgin has to carry.
If it is sold to Chinese controlling interest, there is no guarantee that fares will remain low and even less that the service will be there.
The air will not be fair and the Chinese will want more than the airline , they will expect the gov to take on the debt and will want to pay little for the airline to boot.
Face it , the price of everything is going up as will airfares whether the government urinates 1.4B up against the wall , Virgin fails or the Chinese get control.
Sure ( sadly) people will lose their jobs but, many more lost their jobs when Ansett fell ( I think it may have been 17500) and the government couldn’t care less, why care now?
In fact the government allowed Air NZ to attempt to buy Ansett when it shouldn’t have and they shouldn’t allow the Chinese to take over Virgin now nor bail it out.