Reece

Are the American Mega Carriers the Threat They Appear?

March and April saw most of us wondering if we were, after nearly seventy years of service, going to see Australia lose the identity of our national carrier. Indeed, to have lost Qantas, its distinctly Australian personality and all that it stands for, in a mer- ger with another nation’s tag carrier would have hardly seemed to have been a step forward in this, our 200th year.

No doubt Our New Zealand cousins felt the same about losing their own very successful and highly regarded Air New Zealand. That this, and an even more diabolically unworkable marriage between Australian Airlines, Qantas and ANZ, did not come to pass is literally cause for celebration. Any student of modern airline politics wil readily tell you that such forced mergers are rarely successful even in the médium term. For instance, it took more than a decade just to get some semblance of operational har- mony within British Airways following the joining together of BOAC and BEA in the early seventies. Air New Zealand itself knows first-hand that not all airline marriages are made in heaven following its turbulent absorption of NAC eleven years ago.

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