If Qantas needs extra revenue (which it does), I can't understand why they can't offer a much broader staff travel policy.
Ie VA staff staff can give away sectors to unlisted people and have birthday fares to give away confirmed etc.
Imagine if every QF employee could list friends for cost plus (x) percent to see this downtime through.
Profit = Revenue - Costs
Costs can only be cut so far..... this would be an opportunity to grow revenue.
It would be a brave (foolish) private equity firm that would take on QF whilst the price of oil is so high and perhaps now almost certainly totally detached from fundamental supply and demand pricing.
I'm not sure where to look for this "lead". Perhaps US foreign policy, perhaps China devaluing the Yuan, perhaps the sovereign owned oil companies that now dwarf companies like Exxon/BP/Chevron.
Buffett has always cited Airlines as a must not buy stock for two reasons:
1) Highly unionised workforce
2) Price competitive - lowest price generally wins no "durable" competitive advantage.
People will always need to travel, so that is good news. Bad news is airline ROE and ROA is rubbish. People want to travel from A-B for $69 when a taxi to the airport costs $30 bucks and that is just fact.....
Its a race to the bottom and that is sad........
I don't think it will be too long before Netjets or an equivalent sets up here and then the fractional ownership of jets will make the circus of parking/security/expensive coffee obsolete for the "juicy" corporate clients.
I think the harsh reality is airline travel is now just public transport and that is sad for a highly skilled profession like pilots.
At least we don't have a high speed train network doing the golden triangle.........yet
