If you can stand the heat, get out of the kitchen!!:ok:

Sunny, are you going to give them a go?

HH

Fair, robust, even bitter competition is one thing. Dirty tricks from a war chest built up over 50 years of priviledged monoploly profits....that's another thing. In Europe, Branson and Laker showed in landmark legal battles, that the big incumbent carriers are capable of completely unacceptable and illegal dirty tricks.

Though at least anecdotal evidence exists of such dirty tricks campaigns here in the past, our anti-trust, pro-comptetition laws have yet to be seen to support new entrants. Hopefully this supposedly 'pro-competition" government will do something WHEN (not if) the dirty tricks start.

Good luck OZJET.

Don't expect the Government to lift a finger. The Nine network and the Packer Press would dump on them if they did.

What you will reead in the press is a delightful article about QF dropping its business class fares in a sudden spurt of generousity to the poor bloody consumer.

This will be somewhat surprising since I was led to believe that QF was breaking even or less on domestic economy and Business class was the icing on the cake.


Furthermore, way back when Compass 1 was starting, I asked the ACCC how long it would take to investigate the issue of predatory pricing if an accusation was made.....I was told a minimum of 6 months.

Considering the huge cashflows necessary to run any airline that is unacceptable.

Qantas will hit OzJet with everything available in it's arsenal to put them out of business, don't worry about that.

True and they were successful because they gathered evidence that stood up in court. Cost BA a bit of money in the end.
OzJet will have to do the same. We've already seen how dirty Dixon plays with his own team members (staff) so can't imagine what he'll try with an adversary.

There's going of be plenty of heat in the kitchen if OzJet get up and running but it won't be one sided like the Compass vs AN/TN stoush of the early '90s ! :ok:

Well done to Gordon and his team. Look forward to seeing the 732 in Brisbane in the new year:ok:

Schotty, We done mate...........................JC

nomorecatering no disrespect intended and i'm all for people following their dream, but there is this distressingly familiar theme that runs through Oz aviation and forever damns it.

It is that aviation businesses are promoted and started for the sole pupose of employing pilots and engineers, usually by those unemployed as such or to use fuel, a rapidly dimininshing resource and maintenance, there are warehouse full of obsolete parts as a substitute for real capital.:{

It seems that Governments, airlines and manufacturers have been going down the wrong path all these billions of dollars and years later. Car manufacturers have even been able to get to the California "zero emmission" standards and fuel consumptions half that previously, at a cost of several gazillion, billion, million dollars.

Anyway I'll be gone for a bit while I round up some DC-8-73s for an assault on the Kangaroo Route. I reckon with a 100 pullman berths I rescued from some old 1920s trains, disco and hot tub, we could make a motza.

Heck I could even get amos2 as Chief Pilot.:}

Sunfish
what? do you mean VB and QF kicking into gear to meet the new competition?

BA deserved everything they got and more AND funded their new competitor to a level that may not have occured "naturally' for some time if ever. Poetic justice on a grand scale.:E

That was the this is now.

So, any moves by the incumbents to protect their market will be "dirty tricks" then? :rolleyes:

I seem to recall the same treatment towards VB, now they are allies against the new "enemy".

Sun Tzu would be savouring the exquisite deliciousness of it .

I've been wrong before but IMHO this will be a brutally short war.

They only have to turn the basic premise of the business plan against them by claiming the environmental high ground to put the guilts on the user. Sun Tzu!

Make no mistake whatever most people might think about the apathetic Aussie he does, or at least his adult children do take the environment seriously.

Which brings me to the real question all "old clunker" arguments aside.

How have the Government and regulators acquitted the "environmental impact" issue required by law in this regard.

You're right Keg: another QF LCC crewed only by pilots who are prepared to undercut the J* pay and conditions ... those Impulse guys did F/A duties while waiting for their call up (after not getting into EEA) didn't they?... perfect!

Good luck to Ozjet!

:ok:

Gaunty, there is a law in this country about "predatory pricing" - being one of the tactics firms with market power are not allowed to use.

Simply put, the law states that if you have substantial market power, you are not allowed to sell goods and services at less than the cost of their production as a tactic to undercut a competitor's prices.

If Qantas does decide to "match" Ozjet, I think a few injunctions might start flying about rather quickly.

I suspect that the reason he is using an old aircraft is to make it as bleedin' obvious as possible to the ACCC that the only way Qantas could be matching his prices is by predatory pricing.

Sunsfish, determining the "cost" of providing a service for a given route is, at best, problematic given the mix of fixed/variable and direct/indirect costs incurred in operating an airline.

If an airline can demonstrate that its revenue from a given route is exceeding that route's variable costs (in other words, the route is making a contribution towards the airline's fixed costs), I suspect that the ACCC will have some difficulty in arguing the existence of predatory pricing.

Maybe the ACCC doesn't have to work it out all by themselves. Fortunately, US anti-trust law is full of case studies relating to abuses of market power and entrenched position. Have a Google look at the Reno Air vs. Northwest case where in 1993 Northwest decided to re-enter the Minneapolis-Reno market after abandoning it years before. magically at the same time new competitor Reno Air opened up the route.

Airlines who have ignored or gouged a particular route or market segment for years then only "discover" it when a new competitor comes in....thieves and rogues whose only purpose is to deny consumers their choice.
ONE DAY...new competitors in Australia will have some US style protection.

Our American brothers don't do so many things well...but building Boeings and managing anti-trust are a couple of the things they do really wonderfully.

Sunny

Where did I say anything about predatory pricing??

It's much simpler than that.

As JetA_OK say's he don't have any new ones and the main motivation is that his oldies are no longer acceptable in Europe and will be mandated so before very long at all, so why not send em to a third world country for a bit.

The Oz "give the battler a break routine" is super cynical BS.

I would be prepared to listen to his story were he prepared to stop treating us like a third world peanut republic.

It wont be hard for QF/VB to kill that without moving their prices one little bit.

200s are "old world" for sure. However, a punter isn't going to know unless someone tells them:E Business class is a funny animal. From what I can make of it 5% of the load returns about 25% of the revenue. Extrapolating this, Does that mean Oz only has to run 20% or better to show a good profit?

Methinks OzJet will be hunting for the people who actually pay for their own seats. It will be a cruel hoax on the business community if the Rat suddenly finds excess capacity.

Genuine question - how long is it since anyone conducted regular ops in OZ in jets of this vintage?

I cut my teeth on them but now euro pilots cringe, shrink a foot or two and try to become invisible when one of the very few remaining 732's or 1-11's gets airborne here.

We all used to make that noise but once it has gone from peoples' lives for a few years they won't put up with it again.

The environmental impact issues are significant.

Regards
rob

Who cares about fleet age, types, fuel burns blah blah blah.
With Dicko flogging up and down the J curve all day, every day at times that suit every "important" business meeting; at prices that can be propped by the other 200 punters aft of the snob divider: Does anyone really think it has a chance?

Sadly loads for the first couple of weeks will comprise the fatties that have a QF grudge and can't fit in a VB seat.
"Enthusiast" types will have a crack to get a free sticker to put on the fridge next to the Compass stickers.
The remainder will be journos, freebies, F1 fans and retirees that have just "experienced" The Ghan and now looking for a new adventure to boast about at bingo.

I also wish those at the coalface the best of luck.

I just wish more would wake up and see this as a tax/legal dodge for our rogue ozmate.

bbbbbbbbzbbbbbzzzzzzzzzzzbbzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Yes Rob. It's going to be an interesting concept! Our average airline fleet will slip from being one of the youngest in the world to something approaching the age of our GA fleet. And if "tech delays" with old equipment upset his premium business class passengers - the most discerning of the lot - he may not hold their support.

He won't be short of drivers. If they are not here now they will flock home.

I wish the guy luck - I have a feeling he's going to need it!!! And with the current level of capital city/trunk route service frequency in a country with a population of only 20 million - not quite three times the population of London but only marginally more than the population of NYC - he going to have to fight hard to carve himself an equitable and viable share....... And Ozjet want to fight it out initially on a city pair with a combined population of 7.3 million.

CASA have not yet announced whether Ozjet has been awarded a HCAOC.

:ugh:

Err!...this Chief Pilots job you're offering me Gaunty...would this be an award postion or on one of Honest Johns new AWAs? :p

amos2 eerm I was thinking of something along the line of "profit share". :E

I take the profit, you share what's left over in the galley with the crew.:p that's what Little Johnny has in mind I think.:ok:

Of course just the sheer fun of it is usually sufficient reward for most Oz pilots.:{ and we can work out way up from there.:sad:

Rob back in the seventies, I think it was.

I dont think their competitors will have to do much in the way of pointing out the environmental isues, the aircraft will do it for them.

As you say they will more than notice its return.

I live about 10 miles from Perth Airport and the departure North from 21 takes em around to the south of my house .

In days of yore on a still night or in the morning with an easterly you could hear the "oldies" landing and taking off (including the compressor stalls in the strong easterlys) and you would wait for them to come crackling overhead and get the TV picture jittering away. The Speys were the worst for noise.

Nowadays with the modern kit you can't, at least not easily and in any event the superior performance has em overhead and going through FL150 plus quiet as a mouse.

Most now are so quiet you don't even know they are there.

Occasionally we'd get the odd US military B707, RAF VC10 and the like then they stood out like the proverbials.

And if my memory serves me right they wont be hard to find out the window, you do what you do with the PC3 Orion and C130 look for the grey smoke trails and follow them to the aircraft.

Ah well back to the future.:sad:

OZBUSDRIVER

no, just maybe if he wasn't booting it out the back in truckloads as smoke, revenue is not profit.
And the manufacturers haven't been searching for fuel economy just for resource and environmental reasons, it is a huge percentage of the total cost.
And we have not yet begun to pay anywhere near the real price of fuel.

Trojan Horse - they're trying
 

I am sure Geoff Dixon will have already thought about Ozjet being a trojan horse and have planned for such a move.

The trojan horse concept is not new in aviation. It is a strategy that diverts the attention of competitors from immediately deploying counter measures. So far this seems to have worked for Ozjet by changing the product from economy to business class, changing base and so on resulting in quite a bit of confusion. The chaotic approach of Ozjet appears to be favouring its survival - at least at this stage.

However, I think the market will react to Ozjet and, because the market is not large in Australia by world standards, Ozjet will be forced to change and, that decision, which needs to be made soon, is crucial for its survival.

Having attended an interview with them, they are very professional in their approach but I declined their offer of employment because it appeared to me they don't have plans beyond the next 6 months and for me that is too much of a risk to take. It just reminded me so much of Compass 2.

But, they are at least trying.

:ok: