Have done a quick search of what you’ve posted Squawky and suspect you’re not an airline pilot. Not to worry, I reckon what you have to say is frightfully close to the truth in quite a few areas.
Indulge me if you would and share with those who read this site what you would say if asked to interested bystanders already thinking about-
· Qantas and Emirates getting into bed together to fill in global network holes Emirates on its own can’t access. I.e. Asia/China nonstop Europe and Asia/China nonstop North America.
What makes you suspect I'm not an airline pilot?
Regarding the second question, I would have to answer "don't know", sorry it's not something I have really considered until you asked. As far as the QF side, they're pulling out of the full-service side of Asia to Europe (at least as it stands at the moment), so I reckon they would be as useful to EK in that regard as a tissue paper canoe! The J* hubbing model isn't at all useful to that aim, and besides EK wouldn't go near it with a 20 ft barge pole!
America (both north and south) yes absolutely. It would enable an EK/QF global service. BUT, the problem is QF's (international) cost base, it simply won't maintain the critical mass of hull numbers to maintain the extraordinarily bloated back-office it tries to maintain. This is where it really needs to focus attention if it has even the slightest hope of surviving. Any imbecile (as has been proven) can cut costs by cutting away at the service offered. But the real costs are "behind the scenes" and this is what needs to be addressed, not by under-catering A$5 business class noodles! Possibly one of the funniest things (in a morbidly tragic kind of way) I've seen from this is AJ saying that QF will expand back into Europe once it has it's poo back in a pile. Trust me, once QF loses the (premium) customers to EK, they'll never see them again. The one upshot out of this, that nobody seems to have mentioned, is that this stops the customers leaving the FF program. It's often the only thing that keeps passengers tied to an airline.