OK I can see that many of you are still angry with Air New Zealand. I decided to post this now simply because I didn't want to stir up flames a few years back.

If the B 767 groundings NEVER took place, would Ansett Australia still be around????

My guess....... 50-50. Air New Zealand might have more time to raise cash and Singapore Airlines might be able to increase its stake in Air New Zealand.

But again, Ansett was sick long time ago..... And these problems were long established....

Comments?

No AIR NEW ZEALAND VS ANSETT please!!!!!

I thought that the problem with the B767's was cracking in the Engine Pylons.

Surely replaceing the pylons is not a major job, but perhapa there were other issues.

Also at the time, I do not recall there being a queue of takers for Ansett.

But there again I am just an ignorant Pom, what would I know.

Did they EVER make a profit since 1990? If yes, when?

Hi folks ... There were several reasons for the various groundings. There were 2 separate groundings, if you were not aware, both mainly involving the geriatric 762's, which were among the highest-time/cycle 762's in existence anywhere. The reasons for this state DO in fact pre-date the ANZ managment, to be fair, and have to do with News Ltd. postponing re-equipment decisions that everyone assumed would be made by Singapore A/L once they obtained control. As we know, this never happened because of the actions and delusions of grandeur of the ANZ management AT THE TIME.

1st grounding was at Christmas 2000 which involved the engine pylons I think. The 2nd grounding was the following Easter (3/2001), this time, cracks in the horizontal stabilisers being discovered, as well as it coming to light, that Ansett had missed out on performing some mandatory checks issued by Boeing severeal months before. This happened due to the fact that by that time, mid-late in 2000, after ANZ had taken over, a lot of very senior and good people who had been with the airline for years, walked or were kicked out. Anyway, in the confusion, the dog ate the Boeing maintainance bulletins ! Don't laugh... at the CASA enquiry, the reasons for the slipshod nature of AN engineering ops during the preceeding months, basically boiled down to not much more than that old schoolboy excuse!

Was it all necessary? Who knows? There were certainly important maintainance breeches, but the jury is still out as to whether the flying public was ever in any real danger. What is certain, is that the Goverenment body CASA, for reasons best known to themselves, timed the groundings (Christmas and Easter) for maximum embarassment and above all, commercial damage. This was unforgivable, in any case.

There is a new book around which I am very keen to read, called "ANSETT: THE MURDER OF AN AIRLINE", which deals mainly with this subject.

Despite all this, even without the groundings, I fully believe that AN would have folded. There were too many factors against them. a) Totally incompetent managment; b) a NZ government that dithered forever over laws that would have seen SQ come to the rescue and take AN off ANZ's hands and take a larger share of ANZ itself; c) an Australian government that thought that free-market ideology and practice was more important than a nationally important asset, as well as 17,000 jobs directly, and many more in the service industry sector.

Once the NZ government finally nixed the higher foreign ownership rules, the Aust. government should have sent ANZ packing, and in back-to-back paper shuffling transactions taking all of 2 minutes to complete, nationalised Ansett and immediately on-sold it all to SQ. This should have taken place around June/July in 2001, well before 9/11. Had this been done, AN would have survived, despite 9/11.

There endeth the lesson, amen!

If ansett was still around DJ wouldn't have expanded as quickly and JQ wouldn't exist.

Interesting thread.....and very difficult question to answer given all the variables.

As has been well documented, AN had been in a dreadful mess for quite some years. They never quite recovered from the infamous Pilots strike in 89 and from then on they lurched from one disaster to another and the grounding of the 762s was they beginning of the end I am afraid.

I rarely fly domestic within Australia but managed to fly them four times on the A320, 733 and 762. Despite their ages the interiors of the 762 looked great
- I am talking 1999 here.

What a shame to see such a great Aussie icon go down the drain...But look at those other great icons that have fallen by the wayside: Pan Am, TWA, Eastern, Braniff, etc. Such a shame but I guess that's the world we are living in.

Wonder if we will see another Ansett. Australia is better off with 2 international airlines.

Carefully maintenance would have avoided the groundings right?

Yes I think careful maintenance would have avoided the groundings.

We will never see another Ansett. Australia does not have the capacity to sustain 3 key players - our population is just too small sustain it.

I remember the second grounding well (2001), I was living in Australia at the time. I also remember spotting the ex-Canadian/AC 767's that were leased to offset the groundings. Wow, time flies.

Personally, I think that the groundings had little to do with Ansett's collapse. The end was in the cards for several years, with the reasons already having been posted by our knowledgeable crowd here. Had the groundings not happened... Ansett would still not be around today. The circumstances leading up to the end were far too great and the groundings neither cost the airline an insurmountable sum of money, nor did it destroy public confidence in the airline.

It was an unfortunate day when Australia (and the aviation world) lost a great airline.

In the 1990's Ansett made a fair amount of money. I think that even without the groundings Ansett's future was dim. My dad was telling me that before the groundings he was carrying 55% loads on certain routes.
Anyway My parents both think that Ansett could of survived if Air New Zealand had not sacked those 250 front line managers in the first month, that's a lot of local knowledge lost.
I disagree that Ansett was in a terrible mess in the 1990's as they were still profitable, but there were some factors to tell otherwise.

My first and only flight with Ansett was in 2000 between SYD-MEL on a 767. I had the foresight to take the in flight magazine with me and still have it to this day.

Well you never know about a 2nd Ansett. Perhaps SQ will be interested when open-skies occur between Singapore and Australia??

There is a market for a 2nd international airline I believe. Ansett used to do very well on the HKG-SYD run.....

You sure they were profitable in the 90s? Then how come no body bought it at the end? Not even SIA???? SIA should have purchased Ansett when it went broke in 2001.

If Ansett was profitable for many years, I doubt Air New Zealand can ruin it in less than 2 years.

Personally I believe that SQ would have walked away as well, like what Air New Zealand did.......

2nd Int'l Carrier in AUS?

Well, it's a difficult judgement call.

Personally, I support another full service international carrier to be launched here in Australia, and this view has been keenly supported by majority of high profile officials at ACCC, Dept of Transport and several other related Govt Agencies.

However, there are many factors (and including the population size matter) that would set extremely difficult barriers for a new market player to compete with the ever-stronger Qantas and let's not forget that Qantas is one of most influential businesses in the world of Aussie politics.

But, who knows? Time will tell...

Best Regards.

As an international airline Ansett was quite weak, financially it was just another drain of resources.

The International network was pretty weak. Coz it was small.

But I think it was profitable especially routes like HKG-SYD.

Maybe the HKG-SYD route was profitable but the rest of the network stole those profits.

I personally do not think that another full service carrier could survive in the current environment, be it AN or some one else. With the introduction of DJ to the market and now Jetstar, not even SQ is willing to enter the market. QF Have won the market hands down.
Even another new Australian international carrier would find it difficult to establish itself with a new market base given the strong dominance by QF. Although give the Aussies something good, and worth the money and who knows??
Irrespective of what took place during the 90's, a sound business model would have prolonged the survival of AN.(save now for you never know what tomorrow will bring). Yet this practice was never put in place.
AN would have eventually folded, unless they where to implement a "low-cost" airline model, which could not be achieved either way especially with the high labor costs/conditions of its employees!

I don't know, Ansett might of been able to out muscle Virgin and Impulse, remember what Ansett and Australian did to Compass.

Hi United Airline ... "The International network was pretty weak. Coz it was small" ... very true, mate. Like most other large organisations in Australia at the time, Ansett was a true believer in the "Australia IS Asian" idea, promoted by the previous Labour Government.

This led may companies to focus their energies on Asian markets, to the exclusion of other parts of the world, so AN went off to HKG, KIX, PVG, SEL and other ports, while yes OK, paying lip-service to the Pacific Ocean tourism market (NZ & Fiji). Thus, come the Asian Crisis in '97, almost the entire International route network became unviable overnight.

QF was similarly caught out too, but it had the size and experience to look at a map and quickly discover to their utter amazement, that there was actually another large landmass below North America, and that it had a few decent cities on it, like Buenos Aires and Santiago ; they went back to Jo'burg; expanded a bit in Europe and so hey-presto, escaped the Asian financial crisis with just a bloody nose instead of being an airline looking for something to do with itself to pass the time... which was what Ansett International became well, well before The End.

The really sad thing was that Ansett Int'nl had what was probably the best intercontinental Business Class service of any airline at the time, and probably the same could be said of the Y-class as well. I had the pleasure of flying in both classes a few times, to/from KIX.

Very true Airbear, Ansett had fantastic service.

Well, the current Govt has not forgot the Asia-focus strategy, and both governments are still strongly believed Asia is the way to look forward (although the Howard government understands other continents have to play a bigger role as well).

However, I do agree that an international carrier has to separate its network a bit instead of solely focusing on certain states within a region.

In fact, one of management meetings at Qantas has indirectly pointed out that the airline's recent focus will be gradually move back to Asia-Pacific region based on the fact that to at least maintain the current presence in N America, Europe & Africa.

Best Regards.

In regards to a new international airline in Australia, Wasnt Virgin Blue considering starting a new venture : a fully serviced carrier to fly between SYD LAX and certain Asian Cities and even South Africa...What is the latest with this?

Ansett's service was EXCELLENT. Was it 5 star at that time??

Wonder of AN International was profitable. They should have sold it.

If AN International had a bigger network, it could have turned into a profit.

Technically Australia is Australasia, not Asia.

The Australian aviation market has changed substantially since Ansett collapsed. What I really miss is having that second airline (fully serviced) announcing new destinations and new aircraft purchases etc. It was also exciting to hear Ansett was going to lease aircraft from SQ, to begin flights to London and Los Angeles.

I cant seem to get interested in what low cost airlines have up their sleeve.

unfortunately It looks like Low cost airlines will be dominating our skies. I did believe that should SQ have started a new airline (smaller version of Ansett with a different name) when they collapsed we would have had 2 fully serviced carriers in Australia and at the same time I believe Virgin Blue would be around although smaller but as the only low cost Australian carrier.

To wrap things up I believe that Australia could have supported 2 fully serviced carriers with 1 low cost carrier.

At this point of time with Qantas, Virgin Blue and now Jetstar, anyone wishing to start a new airline and especially a new Ansett will have to be very brave..

There are still 6 Ansett 767 against the fence awaiting sale. As far as I know they have not moved in 3 years. The attractive tail markings were painted out some time ago. If they were high hours originally then their future is obvious.

There will always be a market for full service carriers. Even in the US or Australia.

Hope we will see another International carrier in Australia

not even SQ is willing to enter the market.

SQ would love to have an Australian operation, but even they are smart enough to realise that starting a new airline here isn't going to work. If SQ ever want to realise their intentions in Australia, they are going to have to buy a slice of DJ or QF. Somehow the latter dosn't seem likley, although murmers suggest in the next 10-15 years there could be some tie up, but thats pure speculation.

I wouldnt be surprised if there was a SQ & DJ alliance down the track..

If the groundings hadn't taken place I do believe the future for AN under ANZ was pretty poor.

I did a thesis on the collapse of AN, which included interviews, getting hold of original documents and other research.

AN was a mess when ANZ took over, the reasons behind thisare long and complicated. Few of these factors played a part in the down fall.

What did was the fact AN was always more reliant on 'private travellers' than TN/QF. These are more price sensitive than business travellers, so AN was poorly placed when LCC's started up. Although that's a gross over simplification, because AN held many key business accounts.

ANZ made that situation much worse, when they sacked the key account handlers. The key accounts went to QF. Equaling a drop in Business Travellers.

Another major factor was the loss of Flight Centre Business. Flight Centre are the biggest distribution channel for domestic flights in Australia. AN was their prefered airline. Loss of that status for the same reasons as above instantly put AN into a loss. Equaling a drop in Leisure Travellers.

So instantly you have a huge drop in revenue without the groundings. Looking at the dire commerical management at ANZ, I doubt they could have solved the problem.

What might have happened had the groundings not occured, was a period of sustained drop of revenue, but not as drastic. That might have allowed more time for a re-financing package for ANZ.

It was ANZ that collapsed not AN. The reason AN was grounded is the NZ Government bail out package only included what was economically essential for New Zealand (not unreasonable). AN didn't fit that catagory.

There was a much bigger game being played behind the scenes. Lots of domestic politics in NZ and Australia. Lots of business games between Brierly Investments and SQ. Lots of international politics between Australia and Singapore about free trade agreements. To allow an SQ refinancing deal (be it the one proposed by SQ or the QF proposal) all of this needed to fall in place - not likely!

Did AN fly to PVG? i don't think so. PVG didn't even exist in 1997

PVG did not exist in 1997. But I doubt they flew to Shanghai too, even the old Hong Ciao Airport (Is it still around? What do they use it for?)

AN International should have been sold......

Hong Qiao (not Ciao) is still around and functions as a domestic airport serving Shanghai, in addition to Pudong (PVG).

Ansett Australia did indeed fly to Shanghai while they were still around.

If my memory is right, they started up the service in 1997 (suppose to be early July that year), but then the carrier quickly pulled out of the route at the end of Oct, 1998 [The service was three times per week]...

Best Regards.

Why did they pull out? That was AN's only route to mainland China right?

There were quite a few factors behind, but the biggest reason was due to the business plan change to Ansett International as part of the carrier's attempt to quickly build its earnings (Ansett International suspended & downgraded many international services in 1998). In 1997, Ansett Internationa lost roughly AUD$57 million (although analysts later discovered the loss was even greater than that amount) in total.

Best Regards.

And YES, SYD-SHA was the only international service to Mainland China operated by Ansett...

Best Regards.

Just an innocent question here...

The fact that Ansett wasn't very healthy financially before they went international, did doing it make the problem worse? They leased 743s/744s from SQ and ventured into unknown territory overseas.

Of course there are many costs involved like marketing, setting up a station, ground handling etc....

so could this have made it worse?

Curious Ryan

Hi Ryanair!!! ... I don't really know that it made things worse. International was the "Jewel in the Crown". The idea was sound, and - given their route "network" - would have succeeded brilliantly, had 1) the ASian financial crisis not occured, and 2) had SQ been permitted to have control, or at least a large shareholding.

Actually what went wrong with the B 767 maintenance????

Yes it was Jewel in the Crown. A pity it didn't work which it should