Two scenarios:
1. APA-owned Qantas, to cut outgoings/raise funds to pay APA their obscene 'fee', decide to get out of the lease on the Sydney Jet Base. Guess what, Macquarie Bank - part of APA and the main owner of Sydney airport - sell the real estate and put up Meriton-style flats or an office park. So - no hope of a return of heavy maint to Sydney.
2. APA-owned Qantas, to cut outgoings/raise funds to pay APA their obscene 'fee', sub-let the Jet Base facilities to a either a start-up or subsidiary of an established MRO, who takes over the space and the people and starts charging QF commercial rates for heavy maint in what used to be their own hangars. That is, when they can fit them in around the non-QF business they're winning due to the exceptional quality of their work.
If we want 2. to be a possibility, surely there's some former QF heavy maint dudes out there who could put a business plan together and present it to some banks? Crikey, if they'll let APA have $$$ for what they want to do, they'll let someone with a proper business plan (ie. one which creates, rather than destroys, a business) borrow money!
Then again, these are the same people who lent money to Warwick Fairfax...
