Qantas fold - extremely unlikely.
It's all just a big game to make you scared.
There are too many aircraft leases, too many corporate contracts, a far-too valuable brand and too much business infrastructure to simply shut down or even massively downsize the airline. No, there are very few similarities to Ansett.
The QF Board (suspect that Joyce is just the mouthpiece for one particularly 'driven' board-member) are trying to play you all like puppets.
They're playing the Government (force FWA meeting and force everybody to settle). They're playing the employees ("Gee look they've shut the business down, we better get back into our holes and never misbehave again") and they've got Tony Abbott right where they want him.
But what the hell for? To compete with Garuda and Korean Air?
Yes sure there will be some (like a previous poster) whose prime concern is cost. I don't fly those airlines when I holiday out of Australia. I fly Qantas for a very good reason. I'm pretty sure I'll get there in one piece. If the A380 I'm in has an engine explode I'm pretty sure the pilots will handle it well. I would fly Virgin, ANZ, JAL, Emirates too. Ironically enough, a recent family trip OS was slightly cheaper on Qantas than the 4 other alternative airlines. The flight wasn't historically cheap, (they would have made a profit) and it was packed full too.
So this board will spit the dummy, shut down the airline temporarily, not play by the industrial laws of the land and for what? To speed the cheapening of an Australian icon and make it more like Vietnam Airlines? What the hell for?
So in spite of the right-wing, self-proclaimed free enterprise experts coming onto this forum (it is a pilots forum btw so what do you expect?) I cannot categorize the current QF Boards' actions as anything other than Stupid management personified.
Yes the industry is global but their current stance is like Steve Jobs saying "We need to make the Mac cheaper and crappier to compete with Dell". Quality is quality and people are prepared to pay for it. Sure not all (they fly Jetstar and Air Asia).
In summary - the board's actions do not reflect The Spirit of Australia one iota. And for the reasons above, they don't reflect sound business judgement either.
Last edited by Al E. Vator; 29th Oct 2011 at 12:43.