Updated.
April 22, 2020 05: 28:41
It was a throwaway line in a different time.
Former Qantas boss Geoff Dixon, who took over running Qantas simply months prior to the death of Ansett Airlines, was under no impressions about the problems dealing with a 2nd provider.
” The problem with the Australian market is that it’s big enough for most likely one-and-a-half airline companies,” he quipped independently, years later on.
Australian aviation is littered with the names of airline hopefuls that ended up being casualties: Impulse, East West, Compass, Ozjet and, naturally, Ansett. That’s simply in the past 20 years.
Ansett went under in September 2001, just a week after two airliners were crashed into the World Trade Centre in New York City, an occasion that stopped practically all worldwide air traffic and paralyzed the market as America shut its borders.
But it had actually been on the skids for many years and, quickly before its demise, the Air New Zealand-owned operator was losing around $1.3 million a day.
The parallels with Virgin’s long-expected descent into voluntary administration are exceptional– a shutdown of international air travel weakening the currently precarious financial position of Australia’s 2nd carrier.
However there are huge differences as well. Ansett’s demise was hastened by the