Thankyou for your usual ad hominem attacks Lowerlobe and Hanoi. As usual you have no constructive comments to make.
This argument is not about Melbourne being a better place than Sydney, its about my contention (and others) that Sydney is getting a larger share of tourism, international trade and international investment because of capacity constraints on air travel into Melbourne that are within the control of Qantas.
The evidence for this is the loss of 500,000 seats per annum, according to SIA and Melbourne Airport.
Please note that this is about
capacity not "38 airlines fly into Melbourne" etc. etc.
Of course it is in Qantas's interest to keep aircraft as full as possible since it improves the yield, but it is not in Victoria's interests if Business folk can't get here via direct flights.
At least in the early 80's this was a deliberate conspiracy and I am quite happy to swear a statutory declaration as to what I was told. Participants at the meeting were JB, RB, KB,and perhaps KH and RJ as well as me. We were well advanced in tooling up for the 767.
Since we were now into widebody, glass cockpit stuff etc. I raised the issue of spending a little more and setting up to do 747 line maintenance/TFC work for which there was a ready market because the Eureopean airlines were being screwed for $$$$ by QF in Sydney - and each flight had to go there inbound or outbound whether they liked it or not. I had letters from two airlines asking us to do this.
After two meetings at which a silence descended when I raised this matter, I was bluntly told by RB in front of the others; "Abeles will have our guts for garters if we break that monopoly so shut up and drop it."
The issue has been simmering for a long time, but at least the State Government is finally taking note.
PS. Hanoi, I have reciprocal rights at your
yacht club.
