I never thought I would see the day that CX resembled the likes of Pan Am, TWA BCAL etc..... Well, here we are. Sad. (and btw, is it just me, or do many of you look forward to the Friday Flyer to see what inanities AT can come up with each week...? It's like standing on the same street corner each week knowing there is a car crash about to happen)

Well, this is depressing. Thanks guys! Guess it wouldn't bum me out if I didn't believe it's true. Sadly, it probably is. Are these the same reasons the British Empire came to ruin as well? Bad management, arrogance, ignorance, and stupidity? One ponders...

Ansett introduced sloganeering just before its downfall. The buzzword that front line staff had to use to customers was 'Absolutely'.

The airline shut down a few months after that. And it had not been constrained by a shambolic single hub. But its penultimate CEO was ex-CX.

Traf.. yes.. sadly as an old git..I do look forward in a strange way to reading the friday fire lighter…and equally sad..I get a buzz to read the mentored, steered drivel from the ADFO and AT's plastic propositions..and yes.. I can recall the Bcal days..and the way their arrogance shone through a neophyte HR dept.. in the best way they could couch to the troops that.."all was well'..but ultimately, the saddest of all in this theatre of industrial comedy, where the principle actors were appointed, not by merit but purely by circumstance…that they believe their methods are sound and the train remains on track..and NO amount of disclosure, discourse , forum reality will detract their course.. and yes Traf..waiting for the train crash.. front seats if you will….

How would you describe ~ $1B US per year for several years of fuel hedging losses? Not many airlines can survive that kind of damage to the balance sheet. Maybe CX can, maybe not. Time will tell...

The key to surviving a train wreck is:

1. Be willing to jump.

2. Be ready to jump.

3. Jump at the right time.

You can figure out if you want to be Sam Webb or Casey Jones.

Casey Jones DID get a nice plaque and a cool song written about him (as well as a public commendation by ICRR and some heroism for supposedly having his hand on the whistle and brake at the time of the collision possibly mitigating passenger injuries on the other train; then again the legend may be embellished as legends sometimes are--and if he'd not been going so fast to begin with he might not have found himself in the situation he got into. The ICRR accident report though would dump liability onto Casey for supposedly ignoring a flagman warning which may not have actually happened. Webb would assert until his death that no flagman was visible and no flares were apparent or fired).

Sam Webb survived with a broken shoulder and lived until the ripe old age of 83.

To be fair, the British Empire didn't come to ruin for any of those reasons. Canada/ Australia/ New Zealand/ India/ Malaya etc were all given 'home rule'/ independence when the local populations asked for it/ were judged able to self rule - I would say the opposite of arrogance & stupidity. The part of the Empire where bad management & stupidity did have a part to play was Ireland, where, despite the democratic will of the people, Home Rule wasn't granted, leading to the 1916 uprising. And there, the British Empire made the decision to withdraw (1919-1921), rather than impose rule by force.

WW2 definitely sped things up - ISTR that the timeline set for Indian independence in the 1920's was 1955 or so (it was thought it would take one generation to fully localise the civil service)

Overall, the Empire didn't come to ruin, it came to the end of it's natural life, and for the most part, it's ending was well managed. Arrogance & stupidity would have been to have done what the French did in North Africa & Vietnam, and try and keep the Empire going regardless of circumstances, resulting in massive bloodshed for all.

Cathay Pacific stays the course despite huge first-half loss"]Cathay Pacific stays the course despite huge first-half loss

https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Com...edium=referral

"Damn the iceberg....full speed ahead"....!! You. can't. make. this. up. (love the muppet gallery photo: an Englishman, a "Chinaman", and a Chinaman)

It seems they have forgotten the definition of insanity...

I wonder how this debacle holds up against our mixup with SARS back in the day, where we were told by Turnbull we had only a few more months of cash left to run the business.
How much money did we lose that time Hong Kong was basically shut down compared with our night at the roulette table?

Qantas delivers second-highest profit ever

How rapidly circumstances change in this industry in just a few short years.

QF now going from strength to strength, whilst sadly CX spirals into an unrecoverable and terminal decline.

This may put things a little in perspective:

Swire Pacific's China Coca-Cola business offsets Cathay loss