In the video above the comment states 'can you imagine Australia without Qantas?'. Part of your problem lies in the fact that 'most' of the travelling public seem to be able too. The shutdown of the Qantas group although a tragedy for the staff and their families wouldn't have a significant impact in the long term on the public. Many 'new', 'reborn' carriers would spring up in its place and the public would continue to flee to the middle eastern / Asian carriers that they now seem to prefer.
It is always a shame to see a great brand 'trashed' like has happened here but the fact is this decline started many years ago before the tenure of the current board, yes the current management seem to have accelerated the decline through some quite stupid ventures but from the moment Australia gave so many flying rights to 3rd party carriers the decline was on.
Add into that mix some ridiculous fleet choices and then the current board and it is almost terminal. The 380 was a massive mistake, similar carriers such as Air New Zealand realised that they just didn't have the 'hub' type operation to have such large aircraft, Qantas seems to have been on a bit of an 'ego' trip in deciding that 'they must operate a huge fleet of the worlds biggest aircraft'. Add to this the reluctance to admit mistakes like the lack of 777's and the almost unbelievable decision to give the 787's to Jetstar and the lid of the coffin is almost closed.
Whether we like it or not Qantas is now an airline in a truly global market where many of its competitors operate in a vastly 'lower' cost environment. This means that in order to compete Qantas has to try and find ways of offering an equivalent fare structure with much higher current operating costs. Jetstar, although not born out of this need, has been adopted as the vehicle to provide this 'new' competitive structure which it sadly could of had it not been 'managed' into the white elephant it is now.
What drives me insane about all of this is that Q management have had soooo many opportunities to fix things along the way! Jetstar could have been setup as a 'separate' airline for cost but with a group List to enable easy movement of staff resources to cater for variations in each business. Aircraft types could be streamlined such as convert some of the A320 options for Qantas and or Jetconnect to give synergies in training / maintenance etc. The board should have, when fuel went sky high in 2005 ish swallowed their pride and done what the majority of other airlines did, ground fuel hungry aircraft and replaced them with wide body twin jets. Instead we still have 747's and 767's flying around, my god Boeing reportedly offered the group some 777 airframes in the wake of the 787 delay... DOH!!
Last edited by Ollie Onion; 3rd Jun 2014 at 05:51.