C'Mon guys ,take a breather and look at who the real enemy is as far as our jobs go.
we already have some here who are emailing tightslot complaining about reponses to their posts and to me that is about as un Australian as what our employer is doing.
If we don't work together to stop Darth we will all be vitually paying to go to work...
I have found an exert from an article in the SMH and it is very interesting...
Dixon would have been reasonably satisfied with the $480 million profit Qantas reported, although that profit included $104 million of damages from Airbus for delayed delivery of new planes. Qantas retained its position as one of the handful of solidly profitable traditional carriers in the world.
He would however be concerned about the contrast between Virgin Blue's performance and that of his own group, and the unflattering comparisons between Jetstar and Virgin Blue. Jetstar, excluding $15 million of one-off costs for launching its Trans-Tasman and international services, had an $11 million decline in pre-tax earnings to $25 million. Virgin Blues's pre-tax profits rose 16% to $123 million.
Looked at more closely Virgin Blue generated more revenue per passenger ($133 versus $122) at an almost identical cost per passenger ($120) and therefore made more profit per passenger ($12.60 against $1.80). It also had higher load factors (77% against 74%). Where Jetstar's yields, margins and profits fell, Virgin Blue's rose.
Part of the explanation for the difference in experiences is that, just as Virgin Blue's earnings in earlier times were depressed by the amount of additional capacity it was adding during the 'land grab' period of its brief history that occurred ahead of the Jetstar launch, Jetstar has also been ramping up capacity at a cost to its efficiency and its profitability.
It is evident, however, that Virgin Blue is extracting more revenue from its capacity than either of the domestic Qantas brands. Its revenue per available seat kilometre rose 4.5% against Qantas's domestic mainline operations (up 2.6%) and Jetstar (down 5.1%).
Moreover, Virgin Blue's return on assets, at 16.3%, is nearly double that of the Qantas goup. Given that Virgin Blue, which hasn't hedged its fuel costs, had to cope with a 35% rise in fuel costs, its performance relative to the other airlines in the region is remarkable.
For Dixon, Virgin Blue's ability to cope with the difficult environment is an early warning signal that the original strategy that led to Jetstar's creation may have forced Virgin Blue to evolve in a way that represents an even more direct, albeit long term, threat to Qantas's core franchise.
Jetstar was essentially a pincer strategy. Qantas hoped that by using its own value based airline to attack the high-volume, low margin core of Virgin Blue, to compete on the battleground of Qantas's choosing, and keep it away from the higher margin market segments.