Yes I am an Ansett/Tesna employee - and my husband is a GR member who has (had?) over 250,000 points. (Thanks for your best wishes too btw!)
I mean no disrespect to FF's who have travelled with Ansett - however I just can't compare apples with oranges when it comes to comparing employment conditions with FF reward points.
What I was trying to get across was that FF schemes are loyalty programmes. They 'reward' you with points for flying with XYZ airline. You can then redeem those points with XYZ airline for flights or upgrades and the like.
If XYZ goes belly-up then yes FF's are entitled to receive some kind of financial compensation for their loss of reward points. Ansett Australia went belly up so FF points are technically deemed worthless for the purpose of future travel on AN Aust (since it no longer exists)
So then comes along Tesna, an entirely seperate company to AN Aust who buys the airline. It has no obligation to previous creditors (of which the FF's are many, in unsecured form) - and it also has no obligation to employees either! However, it has agreed to take on employee entitlements for those who remain, whilst those who don't will get paid out. Other unsecured creditors will also get paid out, as a proportion of a dollar value owed to them, because there isn't enough mula to give everyone their money on a 1:1 basis.
So, the FF's will get maybe 5c to the dollar of what they are owed. They are also going to get some form of recognition in the NewAnsett for their loyalty to a previous company that now no longer exists!
It is not an ideal situation that's for sure. Ideally Fox/Lew would simply transfer over the points to the NewAnsett and you would be able to redeem your travel on a 1 for 1 point basis. FoxLew are businessmen and taking on that sort of liability is just not good business sense, in fact it would probably be financially crippling.
They obviously do realise the value of the loyalty that FF's have given in the past, otherwise they wouldn't even make an attempt to regain back the business of FF's and GW members. They could have just as easily cut the cord and offered a no-frills point to point airline carrier.
SG. . <img src="smile.gif" border="0">