Originally Posted by
dragon man
Except that Qantas didn’t bring many home, so it wasn’t. Qatar was the airline that flew most Australians home after Qantas parked its fleet in the Californian desert
I hate that talking point. It’s not a difference between airlines, it’s a difference between governments. The Qatari government made a decision to fund their state airline to keep flying during Covid, even though most flights would’ve had minuscule amounts of people onboard. Any airline with those pax loads operating under free market principles would’ve gone bankrupt within days. Qatar wasn’t “re-uniting Aussies” out of the goodness of their heart. It was a government funded
PR campaign for the nation.
The Australian government gave some handouts but declined to take ownership of the carrier to keep its operations mostly running. They most certainly could have.