SLT: Agreed, however since that comment was made, the market has changed quite significantly. CX have introduced more services between HKG and SYD to compete, as have I believe QF. So the competition has hotted up a fair bit since then!!
No, I'm afraid not. The comment (which was about UK-Aus, not HK-Aus) was rubbish when he first said it, and it was rubbish every subsequent time he said it, too. And you didn't even have to be an industry expert to see that: anyone who travels regularly to Australia knows just how competitive that market has always been. Branson's thin justification for the comment was merely that only BA and QF could operate single flight number services from LON to SYD. (It wasn't even a question of single aircraft services, as airlines like SQ have operated them in the past with a change of flight number at SIN.)
But at least the real-life services have to operate in the real-life competitive environment, not that depicted by a typical example of Branson spin.
averytdeaconharry: BA, CX and QF are all acting together as part of oneworld. This puts VS in a very weak position on LON-HKG in terms of marketing and market share. What they need to do IMHO is ... increase frequency on LON-HKG to at least 3 fkights per day. To inject something new into the LON-HKG market they should operate westbound by daylight with departures ex CLK at 0800, 1200 and 1600. That would provide real competition.
Unfortunately, I think that would be commercial suicide for VS. Even before the SYD extension came on stream, VS remained stuck on one a day as (I think) it had always been. IIRC, at the time BA was about twice daily and CX was about 2½ daily. If VS was unable to generate more traffic and gain more market share at that time, what hope could there be for it to do so when there are now 3 BAs, 3 CXs (soon to go to 4) and ½ a QF a day?
BTW, I think that the oneworld connection can be overstated. The airlines do very little to "act together" on the LHR-HKG route.