Originally Posted by
PoppaJo
Because they give passengers what they have been asking for, new aircraft, frequent schedules and some fantastic innovation in product development. Our main carrier is still flying antique 747s built in the early 90's! Qantas has not updated their A380s since incepted, have you seen the Etihad A380?
As Virgin has very limited scope Internationally, leaving one main carrier being Qantas, the simple reason is they have an absolute rubbish network and offering. Have a look at national carriers networks out of Adelaide and Perth, in fact don't bother because there is none.
A lot of reasons why Australians are flying the elites is due to poor management from current and previous executives of Qantas and Virgin Australia.
I would argue all these carriers landing on our shores are providing many more jobs locals compared to what Qantas and Virgin would ever offer.
There's just one thing wrong with what you say... Australia has galloped full speed down the 'globalisation' path, privatising things like airlines and making them beholden to the market.
Meanwhile, the similarly 'globalisation' chanting competition continue to maintain control of and let's face it, substantially fund through either direct cash or discounted everything, their national carriers... Gulf, Etihad, Emirates, Singapore Airlines (Temasek Holdings is a Govt. owned corporation that owns the majority, i.e. 90+% of SQ so issuing a few shares and saying it's private is BS), Malaysian, Garuda, Air NZ are ALL owned substatially or totally and benefit from sovereign interest rates like QF used to and in the case of the ME carriers, they have access to piddling fuel prices ex their main hubs.
The answer is that Qantas should have been merged with TN but NEVER should have been floated or not totally anyway. Similar concessions could have been extended to AN as well... everyone else is doing it is the problem and we're the only dick heads that lap up the BS mantra and then sit back and watch our OWN carriers get screwed.
Admittedly, the US carriers are all privately owned but they are coming off a base of 330,000,000 using their domestic networks, that's equivalent to every country in Europe nearly in market size.
There needs to be some sort of restrictions as we are going to end up with no carriers... and if anyone thinks for a nano-second that EK, EY, et al will keep flying here when the mood changes, they've got rocks in their head.
It's a concept Australia has never cottoned on to... we treat the ANZUS Alliance like it's some temple of god or something when the US are only in it for themselves and come up in a competition with somewhere else that is of value to them and watch them not live up to the agreement.
One would think we would have learned our lesson in the 80s when the US talked us down the free trade route and we dropped all our tariffs then what did the US do??? Subsidized their primary producers to the point that it was impossible for our farmers to compete.
It's all a crock. We look after ourselves, we engage with the world but on our rules... there has to be a fair exchange. Just like in the 80s... Australia let SQ have more frequencies and MH and CX, in return QF got access to fly the golden triangle without restrictions on local vs through load. Now we just give everything away and hope for the best. No wonder QF haven't invested in product, they actually HAVE to make a profit and don't get the concessions all these other carriers do.