Spirit of Australians, lip stick on a pig!
Just a great distraction and attempt by AJ to make his customers think he is all about Qantas while quietly in the background Jetstar, his real passion expands exponentially!
AJ recently quoted from the IATA conference that he was proud that Jetstar had more aircraft in 7 years than Ryanair. AJ wants more LCC involved in IATA. he might be CEO of the Qantas group but we all know his true passion at the top.
Current Airbus orders Qantas: A320 = 145
Current Boeing orders Qantas B737-8 = 11
I'm pretty sure we could assume these A320's won't be painted in a red tail.
And we wonder why Qantas international is all of a sudden making a massive loss? How else can we explain why we defer/cancel 8 A380's. AJ needs to free up capex to enable the expansion and purchase of shyte loads of A320's.
He's selling the shareholders the dummy. in 2008, Qantas group made over $1 billion, Qantas international had good route structure and Jetstar had around 20 aircraft, no international A330's, and no Jetstar asia. In less than 5 years Jetsar has grown to a fleet of 11 International A330-200's, 47 A320's and 6 A321's with 145 A320's on order. Now after only 4 odd years of AJ Qantas international is making a massive loss.
Qantas commands one of the highest load factors internationally and arguably are the most expensive to travel with. But hey it still makes a loss of $450 million!
Keep making international look like they are making a loss, reduce flights, free up "Qantas" capex by cancelling orders so you can have capex to invest in other ventures.
I really don't think this is about unions, although that does work as a convenient smoke screen to expand a product our CEO cares dearly about. A very smart wee man who has a vision and a need to cement himself in aviation history as has his good friend O'leary in the north. Very very sad about what was a great aussie icon. Unfortunately unless we have a change at the top the future of the Qantas group is all orange. He has the keys to dad's car and he's going to thrash it to death and bring it back with the tank empty.
Smoke n mirrors 101