Singapore fires a broadside

[Redstone]

Gun Boat diplomacy!

Friday saw Singapore Airlines fire a shot over the Flying Kangaroos' bow which will be hard for GOD to ignore. All handling of SQ Australia wide apart from engineering has been swiftly terminated, costing Geoff in the region 20mil pa. Is this the shape of things to come? How will the CEO of CEOs handle this, as I am reliably informed that the Koru may be about to follow suit, possibly engineering as well. Now that's a large slice of pie that Qf management will have to explain away to the all important shareholders. What is going on here? is this the product of an executive that like Nero, couldn't stop fiddling until it was to late?

[botero]

I suspect that GOD may not find this as all bad news. This has given him the perfect opportunity to shed some of the jobs that he had promised would go.

It was reported in the SMH about the 200 Q jobs that would be lost in Brisbane. I have yet to see any media reporting about losses in other cities - but I know for a fact that Q are already looking at cutting jobs in Sydney international terminal as a result of SA actions.

[TIMMEEEE]

At the same time Air NZ ( a Star Alliance partner) has decided not to renew its handling contract with Singapore Airlines ( a fellow Star Alliance partner also).

Talking to the Air NZ manager they are actually losing money doing their work and reackons its costing them $5 million more than the contract is worth.

Dont ask me for the specifics but they were quite pleased to hand the contract over to the Menzies group.

Besides, Singapore Airlines apparently are not great or expedient payers either.

I dont really think that QF is too perturbed by these underhanded Singaporeans that always have their own agenda.

Sure, they want to fly through Oz to the US but at the same time when QF wanted more services through Singapore to Paris they refuse.

I hope they get their just deserts when the hub busting aircraft will be able to bypass Singapore altogether.
Lets see how they feel then, but they'll just buy a chunk of Qantas shares anyhow.

[ginjockey]

And in unrelated other news, Malaysia Airlines is going to start flying services from KL in and out of Darwin again later this year I believe. Not 100 % sure what aircraft types or the frequency but it's likely to be at least a weekly service.

Good news for those in Darwin.