Sunfish
Agreed.
In the unusual conditions of the Aussie domestic market, many sectors tend towards monopoly or a cosy duopoly (viz Corrigan's ambitions for
VB).
In this arguably less than healthy environment, GD can escape the reality that companies become inefficient with time (higher costs & inefficient working practices which gather like moss on the proverbial rolling stone) by simply transferring the lower yield part of the biz to a new organisation which has no such economic baggage. In business terms, this process of replacing a high cost base with a blank sheet (rather than by attempting more drastic measures such as industrial confrontation or Chaper 11 slate cleaning) can't be faulted. Elsewhere in the developed world, the sheer volume of new entrants & low cost competition tends to confound such schemes (eg BA/Go,Delta/Song) but in the Oz domestic market it seems to work - perhaps because with only 2 majors, the public don't have much difficulty in getting the proposition that J* is just QF at a better price.
In terms of the international scene, Australia is inevitably a low yield market- with a population of only 20m, business traffic is limited and traffic growth has to come from encouraging leisure visits at fares which can bear little relationship to the distances involved. Most European carriers have already voted with their feet (and we are seeing BA gradually doing the same - why fly to MEL or SYD when the RPK to SIN of HKG may be better?) and have abandoned the volume sector to the deep pockets of the prestige-driven mid-East carriers. QF can't do the same and drop out of its home market, so the J* option might be a "least-worst" option. This forum obviously looks at the issue from a pilot employment/reward perspective, but even in this narrow context one can still ask whether it is better for employment for QF to match low yield with low costs, or to just become a smaller top-end carrier whose destinations and frequencies are governed by the existence and size of premium fare business traffic (& abandon the rest to the mid East & Asian carriers). The natural tendency would be for employment to be exported to the cheapest (or most subsidised) labour force - one only has to look at the virtual extinction of local manufacturing and its replacement by imports - so where's the alternative?