You can rest assured that if QF thought that they had a case it would already be in court. The fact that it hasn't, means that they know they don't have a case.
Either that or it's a structure they will be attempting to replicate in its entirety soon with the QSA removal. The international and domestic AOC's are just about in place.
So who are the 51+% shareholders of VAIH?
Or is it simply the case that VA is a company registered and listed in Australia and as such is considered an Australian entity, regardless of the fact it has 80+% foreign ownership? Therefore it can own VAIH 100% and VAIH can then be considered to be 100% Australian owned?
If anyone has their head around this I would appreciate the clarification.
It's not illegal for foreigners to own 100% of a purely domestic operation in Australia. Tiger, Virgin, Skywest, Rex have all been owned majority by foreigners in the last 10 years.
If you want to go digging go look up the ownership arrangements of Jetstar Asia. Yes Qantas directly only owned 49%, there is an interesting (Qantas supplied) funding deal for the other 51% and consequentially its a Singaporean flag carrier. A successful government lobby by Qantas in preventing the VAH ownership structure might have unintended consequences elsewhere in the form of retaliatory action.
At the end if the day, Qantas have not gone through all the regulatory pain and cost associated, to split the domestic and international AOC's to show better 'accountability'. The final hurdle is the QSA.