Skystar
It was Singapore Air that junked Ansett.
Part of their master plan to collapse the Airline by installing an inept caretaker in the form of NZ (they had 2 people on the NZ board) as they knew they would cause its collapse.
It was seen as their best chance to gain Australian domestic incarriage/oncarriage infrastructure as well as the prized ex Australia trans Pacific rights they are still willing to sacrifice small animals to get their claws upon.
All went well until certain swarthy gentlemen flew commercial airliners into buildings and a field about 48 hours before stage 1 of the plan was complete.
SQ knew that the only way to rebirth Ansett was to remove the top 3 levels of management. The rest of the airline was fine with great standards and staff. Just the fact that Murdoch and Abeles has gouged all Reg built up by flogging off the owned fleet and leasing a new fleet meant AN was entering a flat spin. Of course the monies received disappeared into the parent companies.
The most cost effective method of doing this was to collapse the airline through an inept 3rd party (enter TEAL) rather than have to pay out massive redundancies to do it with an operating concern, all be it severely ruptured financially.
All went well and was on track until the events of 9/11. Sing Air then slunk off into the darkness with no loss of face. The mud all hit NZ.
It was no secret that Ansett was about to fall over. A client of mine is an operative in the field for the UN complete with pale blue passport. He was in up country Sri Lanka on assignment in a place where they worried if the terrorists were OK if they hadn't heard the 1st hand grenade go off at the checkpoint for workers by 0800.
They were advised through the UN to change all Ansett booking they held to an alternate carrier a full 2 weeks before the collapse.
There was a whole lot more going on than we will ever know.
I was born a TAA brat and worked for them, loved my East West Airlines and worked for a short time at Ansett Adelaide and love the place and the guys and girls.
The big shame today is the airlines don't want staff to the degree that one day your boarding pass may indicate that you have to fly the service.
Best all
EWL