Ansett gone .......but ?

[KaptinZZ]

airsupport, you don't seriously expect anybody to believe the story that Abeles threatened McD and they backed down to him, do you???? Consider the relative sizes of the companies. McD could have financially buried Abeles in less than five minutes if they chose.

Abeles telling McD that he wouldn't deal with them is about as absurd as somebody posting here years back and telling (not asking) pilots to boycott Jetstar because they weren't paying enough. Nobody took any notice just as McD wouldn't have done.

My guess is that the company sourced second hand aircraft form SAS because they were much cheaper.

Regarding assets AN did or did not have, they did discharge $1.2 Billion off debt in two years prior to crashing, and that was BEFORE assets like the Hamilton Island airport were sold off. You either declare profit or discharge debt, but either way, the company makes the money. The owners bled all profits out of the company for years.

I recall doing a tour of Engineering, and a guy in the tyre retreading plant telling the story of where the company bought their tyres. The retreading shop sold them to a Bahamas company (owned by TNT/Newscorp) for a few hundred $$, and AN bought them from that company for thousands of $$. thereby putting AN's profit offshore. The tyre retreading company was only one of dozens of similar arrangements.

When Eddington was pushing a sale, the profits were redirected for a while and discharged some debt to make it more attractive.

But how has air travel changed in Oz since?? Well, travel is very cheap and service is very poor. My guess is that maintenance has suffered somewhat but they're getting away with that currently.

I'm grateful for my time with Ansett, still the best airline I worked for, and it's now been a total of five until my recent retirement. They were managed by a collection of idiots (just check out the fleet managers for a start), and they weren't without faults, but I loved being a part of the great airline they were, regardless.