What would Ansett Australia look like today? (Discussion)

LoganTheBogan · Sun Dec 24, 2017 6:48 am

Gday everyone!

I was looking back at some of my old times with Ansett Australia and it got me thinking: What would the airline look like today?

With Qantas' focusing on long haul Australia-Europe non stop and Virgin mainly staying domestic, where would Ansett sit and what would their fleet, business model, marketing etc look like?

Looking forward to seeing some of your thoughts!

Have a merry, merry Christmas and stay safe

zkncj · Sun Dec 24, 2017 7:23 am

Most likely they would have been taken down the LCC path by there owner (NZ) who has pretty much moved into an LCC model for everything under 10hours.

PA515 · Sun Dec 24, 2017 7:43 am

LoganTheBogan wrote:
I was looking back at some of my old times with Ansett Australia and it got me thinking: What would the airline look like today?

It wouldn't exist. QF and friends would still have killed it.

PA515

downdata · Sun Dec 24, 2017 7:50 am

Qantas would have gone bankrupt or at least they would not have been able to ground the fleet in 11

cougar15 · Sun Dec 24, 2017 8:35 am

It should have been taken over by SQ and would be a thriving domestic today. But politics at the time (and some serious due diligence on SQ´s part) sadly prevented that option.
On tht note, I don´t understand why the Mods moved this thread out of civ av? Merry X-mas to all

mariner · Sun Dec 24, 2017 8:52 am

I never quite understand the point of these threads because the future is unknowable.

Assuming Air New Zealand could have got its act together and assuming it could have found a big bunch of money - a big bunch - then Ansett could possibly have become what it was intended to be - the Australian arm of Air NZ and perhaps with the name of its owner, too.

It's unlikely there would be a "Virgin" - Blue or Australia - because that only initially thrived with the collapse of Ansett, and it is even more unlikely that Australia could support three major domestic airlines.

You could argue that Australia can't support two major airlines, because up to this point Virgin hasn't made any real money.

downdata wrote:
Qantas would have gone bankrupt or at least they would not have been able to ground the fleet in 11

I don't understand why Qantas wouldn't have been able to ground the fleet. The fight wasn't with its competitors, the fight was with its unions, and if Alan Joyce had not done it, the unions would have destroyed Qantas, financially

mariner

ERJ135 · Sun Dec 24, 2017 10:20 am

When posing these type of questions, every one is right and wrong at the same time and at the end of the day nothing said makes any difference. To see where Ansett is today some of its history needs to be eliminated. Personally I believe the sale of the company by sir Reg Ansett was the wrong thing at the time, the company was profitable and went flat broke in a handful of years under its then new owners. However I'll go with a more recent time when Ansett went bust, Administrators took over on September 12th 2001 and began selling whatever assets were owned while still keeping the company flying with the fleet of A320's on the profitable trunk routes in Australia. A bid was put forward to buy the airline and the new partners even agreed to lease something in the order of 50 A320's. So my hypothesis goes from this sale being successful. So 15 years later the now "Successful" Ansett has a fleet of 75 A320 jets with the entire fleet to be replaced with A321neo aircraft. Ansett operate as a low cost model but have positioned themselves slightly higher than Virgin offering free checked bags but charging for carry on over 3kgs. Simple snack menu is included but is better on longer sectors. The airline operates outside the alliances but entered into agreements with China to carry and Chinese carriers passengers on domestic sectors within Australia and inturn an international network courtesy of the 6 Chinese carriers.

sq256 · Sun Dec 24, 2017 12:31 pm

If Selywn Cushing (the 90s version of John Borghetti) didn't let his ego get in the way and block SQ from acquiring the 50% stake of AN, AN would've been still around today as a hybrid model. He was one of the primary (if not the primary) reason towards speeding up AN's demise (started by News/TNT). This lead to a halt of AN's recovery that was started by the then departing AN CEO Rod Eddington (Quote - AN is a great company, but a bad business), who did not agree with the NZ takeover of AN at the time.

If AN was around today (with SQ/NZ as co-shareholders), apart from simplifying their fleet via SQ's financial capital. AN would've taken the LCC (Seats to Suit) route for anything below 7.5 hours - basically domestic and short haul int'l to Bali and Fiji adopted by NZ, whilst their long haul ops via SQ would've been kept to HKG (primarily O&D with VS/EU Star Connections) KIX (NH connections) and LAX (UA connections), with AN codesharing to the other destinations via Star partners.

Virgin Blue would've been swallowed up by the SQ-run AN in due course if the above happened.

BrianDromey · Sun Dec 24, 2017 1:42 pm

sq256 wrote:
If AN was around today (with SQ/NZ as co-shareholders), apart from simplifying their fleet via SQ's financial capital. AN would've taken the LCC (Seats to Suit) route for anything below 7.5 hours - basically domestic and short haul int'l to Bali and Fiji adopted by NZ, whilst their long haul ops via SQ would've been kept to HKG (primarily O&D with VS/EU Star Connections) KIX (NH connections) and LAX (UA connections), with AN codesharing to the other destinations via Star partners.

Virgin Blue would've been swallowed up by the SQ-run AN in due course if the above happened.

I think your scenario is probable. AN would probably offer something similar to the NZ of today, probably have a fleet of A32x and 777/787s, or perhaps a mini-hub at SIN for onward connections to Europe and AKL for the Americas, served by A330s.
Broadly, the VA of toady is what a theoretical AN might offer, in terms of aircraft, routes and service.

TN486 · Mon Dec 25, 2017 10:46 am

All crystal ball stuff. There are a lot of misstatements above re AN. Please read "Ansett the Collapse" written by Geoff Easdown and Peter Wilms. A lot of "what if's" and my personal opinion then and still is : AN had no hope and no future. I firmly believe there is room for one only airline group in Australia, one will always thrive and the other will be there for nuisance value. The only rider is: Watch for the politics and all its bastadry.

Ryanair01 · Mon Dec 25, 2017 4:55 pm

It was such a shame that the Tesna Fox-Lew bail out never got off the ground.

Had David Bonderman brought his experience of financing the Continental turnaround and Ryanair growth then Tesna could have been very interesting. I suspect you'd have ended up with AN looking something like Virgin Australia, but part of Star with A32x family not 737s. There would have been a big challenge rebuilding public confidence after the 767 groundings, but Tiger have largely done it so I suspect a properly financed AN could have done.

What would Ansett Australia look like today? (Discussion)

What would Ansett Australia look like today? (Discussion)

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