Okay, I cannot just forget all about 45 of Airline experience just because of a few annoying children here, and others that obviously have no first hand knowledge of the Industry.
Yes I was with Ansett from 1963 until 1990 and have many pleasant memories of that time, a GREAT Company up until about 1979 when taken over by TNT/News.
Under the then highly regulated system we flew identical Aircraft, over mainly identical routes at identical fares and even usually at identical times, you had places like TSV and CNS with only 2 or 3 flights a day with each Airline (AN and TN) and the flights would arrive and depart within a few minutes of each other.
A very highly regulated system, at very high fares (compared to now) but at a very high level of service.
As I said before I have NO personal knowledge of AN after 1990.
With deregulation, and the arrival of Compass, this was the last thing TNT/News wanted as AN was already having financial problems, and YES there were some terrible things done by AN (TNT/News) to Compass, I won't go on about it all here, but I have first hand direct knowledge of a lot of the things, not just the things like mentioned before where AN stood by and watched but where they actively interfered. Things like trying to stop us getting fuel, having his mate the silver bodgie arranging nasty visits from CASA, and even when we had a breakdown one time in CNS and no other flight of ours going that way, we tried to consign the spares with AN on an AOG basis and they refused. THEY actually got into trouble over this as under IATA regulations one IATA Airline can NOT refuse to carry the AOG spares of ANY fellow IATA Airline.
Anyone just in case anyone still thinks that Sir Peter did not do anything to Compass 1 and 2, one of the worst things I have ever seen and I was personally there when it happened was with Southern Cross. We were over at McDonnell Douglas in the USA doing the MD80 Courses prior to start up, about lunch time on the second day our American Instructor was called to the office, we thought it may have been because he was in the National Guard and it was right after all those LA riots. Anyway when he returned he asked us who the hell was Sir Peter Abeles? We told him, and he said he has been on to McDonnell Douglas and threatened that IF we let you have these new MD80s, he will make sure none of his Companies like AN and TNT ever do business with us again. We said PLEASE tell us you are NOT giving into blackmail? They didn't want to upset him so they had agreed, but they arranged for SAS to supply us with older MD80s, apparently there was NO shortage of Companies that had no time for Sir Peter.