Is Richard Branson any better?

September 2001

Further he went on to say “this Virgin bride is not for sale” gush gush mumble mumble.
I guess now she can’t be given away?
Karma?

And meanwhile us workers just want to work.

You know what? I've sat here for the last few days while you lot ignore the fact its hardly a level playing field to start with. Qantas has, and always will be, subsidised by the Australian government, despite the thin veil of being a private company. You look at the contracts they get, whether that be defence or civil and its clear that after Joe Public the Government are their second biggest customer. If AJ wants to whinge about Virgin asking for a bailout, maybe he should stop the boys club that has protected his pay check for so long.

Um , wonderous , sit there grinding your teeth all you like but QF hasn’t had a monopoly on Government contracts for a long time. But a sense of grievance is always more powerful than fact isn’t it ?
The question that will have to be resolved at the end of this was whether or not deregulation of aviation was worth it.
The old Australian Airlines , Ansett duopoly was cosy , certainly , but in a nation of 25 million the size of Australia how many airlines do you need ?
Just as the US was contemplating re-regulation Australian crossed the Rubicon and plunged head long into an open market.
The Government , of both persuasions ,has been trying to convince itself that it was a good idea ever since. Jetstar , Tiger , $50 airfares Sydney - Melbourne .... brilliant!
But is it resilient?
Is it just robber baron capitalism dressed up as competition?
Is Globalization really the panacea for low grow ?
Or is it all going belly up under real stress ?
Like deconstructed airspace.
Or emasculated regulators.
Big fat chickens are coming home to roost.

Not in the true sense of a open market. One of the big issues in Australia has always been access to airports. Compass had problems with it, so did Virgin in the beginning. Add to that there are no secondary airports like in Europe or the USA. Sure anyone could come and fly here but you couldn't park an aeroplane anywhere. If you had 2 airports in every city in Australia aviation would be a very different business.

Rubbish George
 

George it is BS that Virgin Blue buried Ansett. I was working in the corporate travel industry at the time and it was Qantas that buried Ansett. When they saw that Ansett was so weak they went for the jugular. They offered hard to refuse deals to every Ansett corporate customer they could. They stole every Ansett corporate customer they could irrespective of the profitability. Probably broke a few competition laws but never got caught. The day Ansett went belly up all the deals not signed went off the table in minutes. We had clients who tried to grab the Qantas deals the minute Ansett announced they were closing but Qantas refused. Qantas went after Virgin Blue by starting up JetStar to take away the LCC segment of the market that Virgin was in. Previously Qantas had been prepared to make route losses to drive Compass and Impulse to the wall. The demise of Ansett meant that the technique they had successfully used against Compass and Impulse was not working so they started an airline in the same segment as Virgin. Chris Corrigan who had bought into Virgin and outmaneuvered Branson then took Virgin upmarket in an attempt to give Qantas some of their own medicine. It looked like it was going to succeed at first but ultimately has not gained enough traction.

You want a level playing field? Destroy Qantas and allow any airline from anywhere in the world to fly domestically or internationally into/out of Australia. From Aeroflot to United.

Qantas has done SFA for the australian people. They are an expensive leach. They used to provide an Australian engineering capability that gave us some independence of action. All that is gone. We might just as well have China Southern for all the good it does Australia. 20000 staff? We lost that much in Baristas today.

Just look at the fares QF charged out of the USA last week. Price gouging. F#%} them.

Giant Bird , if you were corporate travel then you missed the point entirely. The government of the day never had the slightest intention of saving Ansett. It was determined to bust the duopoly , weaken the unions and bring down the cost of aviation for the average punter. Pure and simple. Virgin was the vehicle to make that happen. Three was a crowd. The weakest was allowed to fail. As for Corrigans “out manoeuvring” Branson , well that’s worked out well hasn’t it ? It was always a grand folly. Now its failed. Two premium airlines in a population of 25 million was a fantasy. The whole industry has been set up to fail by the decisions of successive governments over 20 years, no make that 30 , starting with Pilots Dispute.
Big fat chickens coming home to roost.

Just saw your post Sunfish.
You are delusional.
The countries that will come out the best of this are , as always , the Germans , the Japanese and the Scandinavians. Because they have a clear , focused idea of what their national interest is. China Southern ? Emirates etc. What in the Dieties name are we doing letting them have unrestricted access to our market ? The shakeout of this across the world will be a comprehensive reassessment of how to secure the Nations interests.
Oh, and hope you travel insurance on your Business class jolly to Europe.
Good grief.

Listen to you wise fish of all knowledge. Every single Qantas pilot wants every other airline pilot in the industry to keep their job. We don’t like what QF management do with a lot of things but don’t just make it seem like a trivial fact that 20000 people are being stood down. Ill say good luck to everyone, except you mate.

Those in Qantas who wanted the demise of Ansett were the imports belonging to the Blue Team. I’ll never forget how some of them behaved when AN collapsed.

Here’s the egg flip - if VA goes under, Jetstar won’t have a “raisin d’être” and could well be consigned to the scrap heap.

Ever since Borghetti took Virgin to full service Jetstar's original raison d'être (raisin d'etre is a French dessert I think)was completed. Their raison d'être now is to maintain QF's 60% market share so I don't think its going to the scrap heap anytime soon.

Lots of very true facts in there sunfish,people need to see what has been removed & destroyed from all that used to be part of the airline.
What we have now are many suits telling the media exactly what they want to hear along with casuals,part timers,contractors & a diminishing full time workforce trying to make the jigsaw work every day.

For a preview on the cost of air travel post a Virgin/Tiger failure read this thread: https://www.pprune.org/australia-new...der-close.html

Flying SYD/PER may be cheaper via LAX/LHR/SIN?

The Government are in no doubt what a QF monopoly would do to domestic air travel in Australia.

With the muddled foreign airline ownership of VA, to thwart and stifle QF’s intrinsic monopolistic behaviour just let foreign airlines fly domestic. Even AIR NZ.
That should wind up the little Irishman. He won’t like dat. To be sure. Cue the “I still call Australia home” choir.

I know everyone is stressed, but get a grip people. Listen to yourselves.

I thought Joyce's comments were directed at even treatment by the government for all airlines, after a suggestion that VAH might be bailed out preferentially and re-capitalised.

Apart from the principal that governments should not be in the business of capitalising private airline operators, the reality is not good for VAH because of its pre existing perilous finance metrics.

QAN has the internal and external commercial financial resources to sustain a significant non flying period, but make no mistake, pilots will eventually be made redundant as it will take years to recover back to a pre COVID position.

It's impossible to know how VAH will emerge from this. Things can change daily.