Originally Posted by
Tuck Mach
Thanks for offering, so how about some facts to back up opinions.
I cannot see any financial upside in the P&L...How much was it?
What about continuing to operate via SIN and to FRA was losing money and dropping it would have saved money but not increased profit but doing it by doing a deal with another operator secured the additional traffic on the domestic network which meant it turned a loss making venture into a sustainable situation. Are you suggesting that with yields dropping on FRA, etc. that they should have just let it keep sliding rather than be proactive so that you would be able to see the effect in the P&L???
It was a declining operation financially (evidenced by the fact that NONE of the major Euro carriers that used to operate here do so any more) and was not going to be able to sustain itself in the long term, so recognising the change and a competitor with links to many more EU cities, they dropped their own service and got the benefit of oncarriage which steadied the ship before reducing profit to a point that it put the whole group into loss. I thought is was quite proactive and you can't use the line that they are giving away stuff to a competitor because they were giving AA all their US mid and east traffic until they started operating to DFW and JFK in their own right so the 'steady decline' argument doesn't work either.
Bottom line it was a business decision to ensure continued return before the previous situation declined too far. The result being that yes, the P&L don't appear to have changed but they would have had this move not been made.
Tim Clark has made it clear on multiple occasions that he expects QF to operate more aircraft through DXB such as the 787 and to take up some of the DXB-EUR flying and he doesn't tend to be someone who says something and doesn't mean it.