Joyce: Pro-Australia airline bills major threat to Qantas eturbonews.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from eturbonews.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Union officials have warned that any move by Qantas to shift operations offshore and set up a premium airline in Asia will provoke a community backlash.
Union officials have warned that any move by Qantas to shift operations offshore and set up a premium airline in Asia will provoke a community backlash.
Australian and International Pilots Association president Barry Jackson said reports that Qantas wanted to base much of the airline in Asia would set off alarm bells in the community.
“Australians want Qantas, not ‘Qantasia’,” he said. “The Qantas Sale Act of 1992 was designed specifically to prevent this sort of move happening. Obviously, Qantas’s lawyers believe they’ve found a tricky way around it, so they are now looking at how best to pack the business up out of Australia and into Southeast Asia.”
The battle for the Australian skies between Virgin and Qantas is shaping as one that demonstrates how the youth and flexibility of the small upstart, Virgin, are worthy adversaries to the flatfootedne
The battle for the Australian skies between Virgin and Qantas is shaping as one that demonstrates how the youth and flexibility of the small upstart, Virgin, are worthy adversaries to the flatfootedness of the market giant, Qantas.
Size and legacy have not worked so well for Qantas against the nimble Virgin Australia, which 18 months ago launched a strategy to tackle the Flying Kangaroo head-on in the lucrative premium market.
Qantas would be nationalised and owned by the Australian taxpayers again if a key trade union in the Labor Party had its way. The flying kangaroo airline was sold off in 1992.