For example, in February 2011, Mr Joyce declared an underlying profit of $165 million for the half year. The result was 175 per cent above the prior year's corresponding period.
Yet just a few short months later, in June 2011, this sunny picture had apparently descended rapidly into an emergency.
You would think that an outsider could analyse the loss by simply examining Qantas's books, yet because of Australia's accounting standards this is impossible to do properly, because Qantas International has not been defined as a segment for accounting purposes.
This has shades of the artificial $300mil profit that Rod Eddington generated at Ansett, before News Corp sold its remaining share to Air New Zealand....
