Gaunty
In one of the first comprehensive studies of the effects of the 1978 deregulation of the US domestic aviation industry, the General Accounting Office found (I think in 1984, haven’t got the original document here) that the real benefits to the consumer and the industry came from new entrants. They didn’t even have to last that long but the fact that they could enter the market made it contestable and kept the “big guys” on their collective toes. That’s where the Teddy Roosevelt quote comes in. People willing to give it a go. Many lose, some win. Some like Compass 1 and 2, People’s Express, Laker and many many more show great promise and then fail for reasons other than the “model”. OK….that’s Capitalism 101.
The point is that we in Australia (though I don’t live there now) haven’t really ever seen the benefits of deregulation in the wider sense. Sydney airport is still curfew bound and dominated by a single major carrier. Had Sydney West (Badgery’s Creek) got up a la Gatwick or many many other second airports…then we might have seen domestic and international competition on a scale common in Europe but unknown in Oz. At any major European airport (and more especially the second airports like Gatwick and Ciampino) you can see daily carriers operating, some flourishing, some not, with names totally unknown in the narrow world of stifled competition that is the Australian industry. There truly is a world beyond Qantas dominated skies. But due to the direct but unpublished subsidies given to Qantas by virtue of continuing decisions to constrain the infrastructure and route access required for real competition thousands of jobs are not so much lost as never created. That’s why Ozjet is so important. Giving it a go is not just an Australian concept, it is the universal cure for the ills of monopoly domination.
I have no brief for Ozjet and know of them only through what I’ve read on Prune and the Ozjet website. But they are keeping the industry vibrant and allowing a few pilots a fresh chance to enter the industry. That’s why I have on the rose-coloured spectacles…I simply wish them well and yet know that their fate is in the hands of the market. They may well not last…..but their impact will.