Forum Archive Index - September 2001

["Bruce Harris" <bruce99@freemessage.com>]

Re: The analogy with Qantas New Zealand's collapse, I think there are some 
strong similarities to note:

a) New Zealand has ended up with a NZ owned and based monopoly- this is a shame 
to some extent but I think the NZ public were not too upset at "Qantas" demise, 
being the embarrassment of an Aussie brand at least. Similarly now Aussies are 
quite clearly not uncomfortable at all with a Qantas monopoly, with NZ being a 
convenient scapegoat for the short term pain of downsizing the staff involved 
in australia's airline industry to a realistic and more efficient level. 

b)A second airline is a difficult thing to run profitably- Ansett Australia may 
have had more chance than a NZ airline if only because of the economies of 
scale- counting against that was the obvious union based fatness of Ansett 
Australia. 

c)The shareholders get a lot of the blame- I think in the case of Qantas NZ in 
fact the shareholders were criticised too harshly- largely for being wealthy. 
In fact they at least put up the cash and lost a lot of money in a short space 
of time. The real Qantas got the benefit of a NZ airline without any real risk- 
here I disagree with the last comment- that Qantas had no moral obligation to 
the collapse in NZ. I think they had as much moral obligation as Air NZ in 
Ansett's case. In fact given that Air NZ has fronted with $1.2 billion to date, 
and clearly put their hand up somewhat in advance of the collapse, arguably the 
moral obligation in Air NZ's case is not huge.(The biggest moral obligation in 
fact should have been to have pursued with the Australian government/ unions 
far earlier than they apparently did, to downsize the Ansett business to a 
sustainable business. 5000 jobs are better than none.) Legal obligations 
clearly may take some time to resolve. ;

d)In both cases then NZ has put up nearly all the money ( unless Aussie Banks 
actually wear some of the Ansett debt), and although its hard to pick winners 
in such circumstances, Qantas is sitting pretty in Aussie and comfortable in 
NZ. Overall a huge transfer of wealth from NZ to Oz. 

Bruce

> Didn't we here in paradise have another domestic airline a short while
> ago that was owned by Qantas and left to sink with all the job losses
> and costs dumped on us? Wasn't this exactly the same thing that
> happened with Air NZ and Ansett?

No.

Qantas New Zealand was a totally New Zealand owned franchise.  It hired out
the Qantas name to trade.  Qantas had no other financial interest it and no
obligation, moral or legal, to step in.

Jeremy


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