The Japanese shoot them down over the Indian Ocean in 1942. BA steps in to fill the gap and remains a big enough player to strangle Ansett et al in the cradle.QANTAS is very profitable, I think one of the most profitable airlines in the world.
Did you ACTUALLY pull current politics into this? American politics? The U.S. doesn't even HAVE a triple damned national carrier to begin with.
NEVER DO THIS AGAIN.
No. It had an unofficial status as the National Airline, but it was never a true National AirlineWasn't Pan Am the national carrier until its collapse?
No. It had an unofficial status as the National Airline, but it was never a true National Airline
Capitalism.Any particular reason why America never went with having a true flagship airline?
Any particular reason why America never went with having a true flagship airline?
Basically this^^^^Capitalism.
But seriously it was because the geography of the United States is so big and the range of the first passenger airplanes was small that the first airlines in the United States started as regionals then as the range for the planes grew longer there was consolidation and mergers of the airlines.
There was the attempted private equity takeover of QANTAS back in 2006. Fair odds that if that had come off the company would have been asset stripped, used to carry debt from other takeovers and then shot into bankruptcy...As for Qantas. Make Qantas as incompetent at the top as Telstra with international airlines and other domestic airlines (Virgin, a surviving ansett) becoming more viable and take market share away from them. That still probably doesn't destroy them.
I had a teacher who traveled with them in the 80s. Apparently ex-air force pilots would default to very steep take offs. He had a story of a pilot exiting the cockpit to have a smoke in the toilets. Returning to the cockpit door. Disappearing again. Then returning with an ax to smash his way though the locked cockpit door. Fun times.Air China* is forced by the government to support some premature domestically manufactured commercial airliner program, a few crashes happen, the company’s safety record is tarnished.
In OTL it has a first-grade airliner fleet, and a okay safety record, it had only one major crash in 2002, apart from crashing after being hijacked.
There was the attempted private equity takeover of QANTAS back in 2006. Fair odds that if that had come off the company would have been asset stripped, used to carry debt from other takeovers and then shot into bankruptcy...
Another option would be less investment/fleet renewal in the lead up to privatization, or possibly no merger with Australian Airlines prior to the merger. The first sets shit up to hit the fan when new airframes are needed, while the second means QANTAS doesn't have the juicy domestic market dominance to keep cash rolling in.
Or the 2011 strike and subsequent grounding and lock-out (and associated 2014 faux-big losses...) could go much worse than OTL.
Or we could look into the future... with the limited investment over the last decade or so in QANTAS proper under Alan Joyce (in favour of a variety of failed or poorly performing ventures related to Jetstar), the fleet is starting to show it's age and is noticeably less fuel efficient than many of it's competitors... Throw in an oil price spike and things could get bad.
Eh, i heard this story in another version. Are you sure this isn't an urban myth?I had a teacher who traveled with them in the 80s. Apparently ex-air force pilots would default to very steep take offs. He had a story of a pilot exiting the cockpit to have a smoke in the toilets. Returning to the cockpit door. Disappearing again. Then returning with an ax to smash his way though the locked cockpit door. Fun times.
I actually read this as a one page comic strip in a Belgian magazine in the early 1990's.I have heard other versions too. It probably is a myth but it is still a good story.
If this is from comicstrip „Natacha“ ? Then is very likely Happen at Sabena...I actually read this as a one page comic strip in a Belgian magazine in the early 1990's.
QANTAS is very profitable, I think one of the most profitable airlines in the world.