Don’t worry, Geoffrey says it’s OK
 

I'll try and raise you mail-man. "People lets work the problem failure is not an option".

Hearing that bloke talk is cringeworthy. He thinks they’ll get picked up because they have good onboard service. Do you really think potential buyers care about that, or do they care about potential profitability? It’s all well and good to be a good airline, but you have to be a good business. No mention of its debt or 8 years of consecutive losses. Under the right leadership with the right shareholders hopefully this can be recovered.

So if they can walk away from their debt can I walk away from mine?
Always someone else’s fault.
As I said playing with other people’s money.
Please don’t use Rod E’s words.

The convening period can be extended by application to the Supreme Court

sorry, it was a subconscious paraphrasing of that famous quote, not trying to claim it as an idea of my own. I just find it staggering that GT rambled for 7 minutes without bringing up anything resembling an understanding of basic economics.

Accountants don’t give a sh!t that you have a good onboard product if it losses money.

They should get John Borghetti on sky news and ask him how he sleeps at night. I’m so pissed at that bloke and I don’t even work at VA.

Didn’t Ansett MkII last about 14 days?

If GT said they’re fine then I’m worried as he’s normally totally clueless about most things aviation (I hope he reads this)

Sure! I will let some tidbits out. I know because I was ‘around’. Geoff Dixon, Alan Joyce and Bill Jauncey were the architects. Obviously Geoff was at QF and Alan and Bill were ex Ansett. In fact, once up and running Bill Jauncey could/was almost the JQ CEO but they wanted a ‘cleaner’ looking CEO image, a clean shaven suit wearing mincer like AJ was perfect. Bill was a gravelly whisky drinking ciggie smoker, but a very smart man. The original plan was simple - QF to do international and just the highly profitable business class domestic routes - BNE/SYD/MEL. The rest was to go to JQ. Cheap cheap cheap! Get rid of those pesky $300k pilots and have the majority of flights done by Onestar Pilots on around $120k. That’s the short version.

As for Virgin (Blue), they should’ve stuck with the intended business model - all 737 fleet and aimed at low fares and filling planes. Simple. But by the time JQ was hitting the tarmac VB had a fat workforce and was far from lean. JQ was the opposite and most times it was ridiculously lean. VB were never going to be able to operate cheaper than JQ and should’ve started trimming fat back in 2005 but they didn’t. They became a floated company and decided to chase QF’s business model/lounges/ rewards card structure, but it was only ever a half arsed product that sat in between cattle classs and business. Big, costly mistake. Then when they morphed from an all 737 fleet to an entity with b737, A320, A330, ATR and the list goes on, it was ‘game over’ not ‘game changer’. You would’ve thought that the ghost of Ansett and it’s ridiculous fleet variation thanks to Sir Peter Abeles going to Tolouse and getting a hard-on and opening the cheque book could be repeated. You would think that Ansett would have still been fresh in the minds of anyone operating an airline in Australia, but nah. That was the day Ansett died, the end result was inevitable and occurred a number of years later. Same has happened to Virgin Australia, it started out with an identity but lost its way and never got comfortable with who it wanted to be and what it had eventually become.

South African probably has a week left to go at best. This is the beginning. Many more will fail.
The industry has never seen anything like this before. 9/11 was just a blip and was probably the only thing to really measure the COVID aviation crisis against. And even then, it’s apples and oranges.

The key players in this are Singapore Airlines, Air China plus Cathay Pacific (30% cross shareholding) and Alliance plus industry super funds. Cathay leaves One World and joins Star. Singapore makes the running with Air China and Cathay Pacific in the background. Alliance takes VARA and a holding company with the above shareholders re-launches VAH as Star Alliance Airlines. Administrators return all leased aircraft. There will be no shortage of aircraft in the above fleets to supplement growth. Possibly the Government allows some wet lease cabotage for widebodies to do transcontinental. There is a loyal customer base that will remain loyal, especially if AJ continues at Qantas.

Right, so listening to PS today, and his administrator....no job losses expected.

Can someone explain how the 777 and A330 crew are going to be kept on? Just curious if some has a better radar than mine?

According to all media reports none of that will occur. Westfarmers or some hedge funds are the early contenders out of the gate. No Asian interest at the moment.

You pretty much nailed as to why Virgin has never made money. It really boggles my mind as to why people need to complicate things in business. But then again, nothing surprises me anymore.

Outside of the narrow world of aviation enthusiasts no one knows (or cares) who the CEO of a company is when making a decision on who to fly with. Loud mouths on social media may think they influence a lot of people. They don't. I doubt more than 0.1% of VA's customers fly them because they hate Joyce. There's probably more who fly QF because they find the name "Virgin" inappropriate.

dr dre. I respectfully disagree. Most people who travel know who the CEO of Qantas is while they may never have never heard of Paul Scurrah. Wesfarmers is too smart to go into aviation longer term although they have the balance sheet to fund a transition. There will definitely be an anchor airline involved. Parargraph 377 is on the money. John Borghetti was the wrong person to run VAH, especially with the shareholder register he had. He spent more time managing shareholders than running the business. Best of luck to all the VA front line staff.

Umm, as a side note, is that a Concorde model in the background with an amateur 70's QF tail???:confused:

Time to shut it down, Talk about thread drift.

"no job losses" is simply playing down what is to happen as that's the last thing the governments want people to hear.

Private equity are all about buying distressed companies with good assets (planes etc) at a huge discount and then selling these, loading the company with new debt and then selling it back to retail and pension funds at a huge profit. Anyone that understands this will then see that:

1- Job losses are inevitable in the short to medium term as VA will come back as a leaner operation flying on mostly profitable routes,
2- International flying will likely be made through code sharing rather than own metal,
3- QF are not going to sit idly and watch a leaner VA eats its share of the cake,

I wouldn't hang my hat on Westfarmers being smart. Did they not take Bunnings to the UK then after it being a disaster pulled out?

Like people having the idea that SIA are savvy business people and that all that money is just going to be poured into yet another failed business investment.

Not to mention the fanboys still treating SIA as some "so-called messiah" of airlines, when in reality SIA can't organise a p^$$up in a brewery outside their own backyard (as shown by the mouting losses from their overall dismal record in investing in overseas arilines from Virgin Atlantic to the Air New Zealand group).

SIA are best to stick to their 'knitting', which is running their own group of airlines in Singapore.

Wesfarmers have its own issues with Target at the moment I don’t think they want another. Target and Kmart could have earnings issues post this if spending slows. That will spread to leisure travel also, so highly risky taking on an airline, and having large stakes in discretionary spending businesses.

Para is pretty well spot on. I will add however that Virgin never really grasped how brutal QF management is , even with its own people.
Dixon initially offered JQ flying to mainline QF pilots but on a new cheap and nasty contract. The geniuses at AIPA demanded that the flying be done on existing awards. Management laughed. Enter the JQ $120ker”s , many left over from Ansett just happy to have a job and even happier to undercut Virgin. QF dumped Tasmania , Gold Coast etc. because they were loss makers , hived them off to JQ , and again ignored the bleating from Mainline pilots.
Virgin then tried to take on QF in mining contracts in WA. They got some, but only the ones QF knew were duds.
And then there was Business Class. Oh dear.....
Etc. etc.
The moral is that anybody who take on QF in a new entity better know what they are doing or we will be back here in a few years time.

Just a quick correction George. QF never offered the JQ flying to Qantas pilots. Never. It had already been claimed by impulse pilots by the time AIPA was any the wiser. The impulse pilots offered to fly the A320 for the same money the we’re flying the 717’s. QF couldn’t resist. I was there. AIPA actually helped them get more money, but the only thing QF (and the fat bastard) would agree to was a fairly useless MOU.

SP, didn’t mainline QF pilots end up working for Jetstar?

A decade later, yes. Some did. It’s not relevant in the context of this thread. I’m just setting the record straight about another uninformed attack on AIPA. Carry on.

Agreed, initially at least , but when the Impluse pilots were all taken up discussions were entered into. I remember the meetings in Melbourne clearly.

If the new Virgin Australia wants to go head on at QF they need to do it as part of a major airline such as SQ or Air China. Before the major corporations shift their travel accounts they would want to be sure that the airline they switch to is solid, has all the perks such as lounges, membership of an alliance and a proper business class, and will be around long term. If this can't be guaranteed then don't even think about it.

If it's an Australian private equity take over then respect QF's 65% line in the sand, have a single type on domestic routes (possibly NZ, Fiji and DPS), business class similar to JQ if at all, and stick to profitable routes with a lean operation.

Don't bring a knife to a gun fight.

Neither SQ or Air China has formally expressed interest in VAH to administrators.
The current SIA board wouldn't be that stupid to throw away money at a "4th attempt" at the Australian market after the fails of their first 3 attempts under previous management teams.

What's with all this talk on the day VA goes into administration of another upcoming major capacity war? The last one that happened put VA into a decade of losses they never recovered from. For the next few years it'll be solely about survival and return to profitability in a smaller form. Given what happened last time not a single investor is going to back another exercise to burn cash, especially in the market environment that will exist for the next few years.

PS. The QLD Govt. are using Bazookas in gun fights now...:rolleyes:

Ha! I wouldn’t exactly call $200 mil a bazooka in this business.

shhhoosh, GG has the floor.....
 

Really George?

I doubt more than 0.1% of VA's customers fly them because they hate Joyce.

Oh...thats me then.??..., We haven't flown QF since the 2011 'shutdown'....

https://www.afr.com/companies/transp...0200421-p54ltx

https://cimg5.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....9e604874dc.jpg
Sir Richard ripping up a cheque for $240 million from SIA wanting to buy VB. Oh how the world changes.

Its of no consequence to me if you believe me or not , but I know for a certain fact that Virgin acquired contacts by under-quoting QF to the point that they were not worth a pinch of the proverbial. That’s why they are where they are. Virgin had no corporate memory of the fact that regional aviation , RPT and Mining , has been a graveyard in every state in Australia for 40 years. The never ending search for a cheaper contractor is a sick joke. Witness the demise of Airlines of SA , MMA , Air Queensland, National Jet ,LLoyd Aviation etc. etc. Now , sadly many more will follow in their wake. Creative destruction! The free market has done its work. Services to regional Australia are worse than the were 30 years ago. Brilliant.

"PS. The QLD Govt. are using Bazookas in gun fights now...https://www.pprune.org/images/smilie...n_rolleyes.gif"

You are aware of that saying about 'keeping your mouth closed and letting people think you are an idiot rather than opening your mouth and confirming it' right? :rolleyes:

Thank God(us tax payers) that the govt held strong and didnt bail out VA. This would have been a bad signal to interfere way to much into the market and for tax payer money to be very badly spent on a risky loan to VA.
Now VA says they have 10+ buyers in the winds! So that magically happened overnight? I think Scurrah was taking the piss out of the tax payer, and quite frankly the piss out of Tigerair and VANZ staff that he just sacked on a dime.
What an arse IMHO.