Perhaps this was the plan all along, order a truckload of A320s for the Jetstar expansion into Asia, announce Jetstar Hong Kong, knowing full well it could take a long time to finally get approval to operate,if ever, then the aircraft start getting delivered and parked,
once that becomes public knowledge, the Qantas group has a bunch of aeroplanes it needs to do something with, voila! repaint them red and get jetconnect crews to operate them domestically?
Except the market is already saturated. Yields are way down because Borghetti is forcing Joyce to add capacity at an unsustainable rate to maintain the line in the sand. Imagine dumping capacity into an already saturated market.
This would only make sense if the 738 fleet was downsized. Then the company runs contrary to its stated strategy of cost reduction through rationalising and simplifying the mainline Dom fleet.
And if the co. was to rapidly introduce A320s into Dom mainline they would run into issues regarding who would certify for them. There are a few guys with A320 licenses, but not nearly enough. And many of them are ex-Ansett with low time in the co. The rumour is compulsory redundancies aren't too far away, and the easy path for the co. is to "last in first out". So there go your ex-Ansett A320 licenses.
In its wisdom, QF Eng management has not trained sufficient engineers on A330s. So the scope for popping A330 licenced guys on A330 to A320 conversion courses and still retain sufficient license coverage on the line to certify for mainline A330s is very limited.
Unless I am missing something really obvious?