Some quite interesting points made so far, the view that the current management team of Qantas is not up to it seem unanimous, even if it has the financial numbers it has no employee support, little public support and lukewarm market support. The notion of Qantas as a national icon seems predominantly supported and its place in Australian history clear. The vexed issue remains, where to next?
If you consider the history or growth of Qantas suggested by my first posting, you see a clear transition and development of what were two distinct businesses, Qantas and TAA into a singular business group Qantas. The original companies serviced very different markets, overseas and international travellers and domestic local travellers. I am not convinced that the joining together of the two ever made any business sense and there was little logistical saving in training or maintenance. The merger also in my view complicated engineering and fleet choices. To save both or the Qantas brand, which is really an international brand, seems to require that the company board and senior managers be replaced and the company be split into Jetstar, Domestic and International. All should be set loose to go after the market they are good at without being tied to each other. I would rebrand the domestic business RedQ-The Nations Airline and drop the Spirit of Australia crap from international. You could have Qantas Fleet be reconstituted into an aircraft leasing and maintenance organisation to service all three. You could have FT & S or C&T reconstituted to provide safety and training to all three, with free movement between groups to those involved if they so chose. My views are also based on the issue of mergers, most big business mergers rarely succeed and decoupling or business damage is frequent despite M&A being considered hot activity, the Qantas experiment is to my view consistent with this outcome, it has not worked and both entities are a drag on the other.
More food for thought!
Qantas International has to survive it is part of who we are as Australians (other company's could have been but did not survive) and I am sure there would be very few Australians who would like to see it fail and dissappear. Yes and Geoff Dixon's the 'sky is falling act' is not going to work for the current CEO, you don't need a re-write of the Air Navigation or Qantas Sale Acts, you just go around them by reorganising back to the way things were then go for it! Could do worse.