Back to substance of the thread . . . this matter has got me thinking.
Porchmonkey, you are right about the capacity QF and
VB to “repair” schedules. And to
Mostlytosses’ point, I agree that QF can do it better than
VB.
That said, it is not always that simple - the cancelled flight to remains cancelled until replacement aircraft/crew or whatever is found and not many passengers can get moved to the next flight at peak times. An airline like Tiger with so few aircraft in Australia will have more difficulty recovering from a delay.
Having made the decision to travel on Tiger I decided to read up on them. The ‘about us’ section their web site is interesting. They have an impressive heritage . . . the key investors are Singapore Airlines, Indigo Partners LLC (headed by Bill Franke, former CEO of America West and many other aviation interests) and Irelandia Investments Limited (ie Ryanair) and Temasek Holdings Pte Ltd (ie the Singapore Government).
If this collective group don’t know a thing or two about running aviation related businesses then I’ll go ‘he’.
Tiger started with two aircraft in 2004 . . . and it they now have more than 70. That’s like
VB growth and it will be interesting to see how the airline grows both here in Oz and in SE Asia.
Tiger’s ‘business model’ is described on their website . . . read Ryanair – a very successful operation.
My point still is . . . we are witnessing a paradigm shift in this industry. The business models that supported ‘full service airlines’ are fast dissipating. Perhaps customers are no longer willing to pay for stuff they don’t understand (ie full service) and increasingly the will choose the lower cost and ‘essentially the same’ services.
Michael Pascoe wrote in today’s Fairfax (The Age - Qantas - it's worse than it looks) papers that QF announced to the ASX that its international passenger numbers down 13.5 per cent to 527,000 while Jetstar international passengers jumped 51 per cent to 205,000.
As I see it, we are living in a new world where the choices in travel are but a mouse click away. There is no way that we are going back to ‘full service airline’ model as the standard operational model . . . it just not make sense anymore. We of course expect safety and reliability (that’s what airlines do, right?), and at the end of the day it is but a mode of transport.
I mentioned this on another thread (I apologise to those who have already read it), perhaps some people are waking up the fact that part of the 'full service' means paying for unfunded liabilities like pension plans and unused frequent flyer points incurred in previous years by previous passengers?
But then, perhaps I have said too much . . . I probably should just jump back into the cheap seat, enjoy the ride and shut up!
And I genuinely don’t mean to criticise or annoy anyone – it just isn’t my style.
Cheers
Pedota