Agreed T.R - Ansett was a basket case - even the outgoing Rod Eddington described it as a "great airline but a bad business". The last 12 months were probably the least enjoyable I have spent in any form of employment . I could see the writing on the wall and regret the decision not to have taken the last redundancy offered.
What I find is interesting is that there were only 2 airlines expressing any interest in Ansett - Air NZ and SQ. I am sure that if Air NZ had performed the normal due diligence they would have not gone near it.
That would have left SQ - and Q.F lobbied hard to successfully to stop a sale of Ansett to SQ as it would have caused them a huge deal of commercial damage as ,all of a sudden, Q.F would be facing a larger and more cashed up competitor. Whether the decision was right or wrong is water under the bridge , but it would have been fascinating to see how the government would have reacted to having to make a decision to let Ansett go bust or allow SQ to buy it and upset the strong Max Moore Wilton - Geoff Dixon camp at Q.F . What a stoush that would have been ! What would the industry be like today if SQ had been given ministerial permission to buy Ansett? The mind boggles.
As for all the conspiracy theories regarding the grounding of Ansett's 767's . I simply don't believe them . They were tired old clapped out aircraft . As cabin crew I couldn't believe the run down state of the interiors. I stopped writing cabin defect forms because nothing was acted on. At one of the Ansett wakes I attended I was fortunate to have a really good long chat with some of the Ginger Beers who told me a few truths about the 767's -eg lack of parts , blades worn to minimum etc. One told me , and not tongue in cheek, that Ansett was bloody lucky it didn't kill people in the last year of it's operation - that statement almost sobered me up for a second or two!
Anyway , I've moved on to better things and a happy life - even flown on Air NZ a few times - they are a good service airline. You can't blame the soldiers for the crap decisions of their Generals.
Good luck to you all.
Last edited by priapism; 15th Feb 2007 at 23:04.
Reason: more beer