It is very obvious that Clifford & Joyce have no intention to purchase any more aircraft for mainline and thus as more aircraft are sent to the graveyard, services will have to be withdrawn.
They are smart enough to know that the institutional shareholders will query pulling out of profitable routes so they have to engineer the situation so that it appears unprofitable. This is currently happening to the JNB route - Joyce cancelled the Joint Agreement with SAA citing that the ACCC is unlikely to allow the agreement to be renewed (he didn't even try to get it renewed). Since the cancellation, SAA have been putting all their pax on their services to PER with East Coast feeds on Virgin. This has totally changed the dynamics of the daily QF SYD-JNB-SYD service, reducing from a very high (& profitable) load factor to an unprofitable load.
I expect that there will soon be an announcement that the services will drop to 3 or 4 per week and some months later, QF will pull out of the route totally. Thus a couple of B747's can go to the desert without having to be replaced. There will be more jobs lost as Clifford's plan to dismantle Qantas continues.
