I thought that this was supposed to be the Asian century?
Strange, isn't it, all the Australian government and opposition talk about is our Asian friends and the need to strengthen ties with them, so the national flag carrier promptly starts shutting down routes to Asia and forms an alliance with a Middle Eastern airline? An alliance with SQ would have given QF access to all the European routes as well!
(I did one of the first MEL-DXB-LHR QF flights on the 3 April and later a return, never again. The menu is crap, DXB is not a nice transit airport when transit time is short, i.e. same aircraft, refuel and crew change etc. The 60kms free transport each end is a big plus but I'll be going by Singapore in future)