Hmm Sunfish,
Your last sentence could not be closer to the truth.
We, Qantas, have been rudderless for the last decade or so, with little direction or interest shown by the board we're sent to crash upon the rocks as an outdated legacy end of the line carrier.
The alternative view is that we have a huge advantage to other international airlines in that we are not an end of the line carrier but a funnel into our own vast domestic network. We should be offering an experienced, reliable and strong product to mainland China as it grows, just as we successfully did many years ago in the Japanese market.