Interesting

[Supercharged]

Originally Posted by mik

sounds like good business sense by GM , they merge with a company that is in a much better pozzy and use up their resources to hopefully pull them out of the crap, either that or take Ford down with them !
and a smarter move by Ford not falling for it.

Didn't New Zealand Air do the same thing to Ansett?

[ltd]

Originally Posted by Supercharged

Didn't New Zealand Air do the same thing to Ansett?

Was only a small part of the reason. The reason for Ansetts collapse lies squarely with the TWU, and their ridiculous demands for example; Ansett gets modern aircraft like the 767's and 737-400's which only require a captain and co pilot to fly replacing the third position of flight engineer. TWU bullied Ansett into keeping the flight engineer in the cockpit in the jump seat with nothing to do, but still on full pay. Anywhere else when technology deletes a position, you're made redundant. Not at Ansett.
Same for cabin crew, baggage handlers etc etc. Over staffing and ridiculous costs for conditions imposed upon the airline by the TWU strangled the airline from evolving like Qantas was forced to do. When players like Virgin came in, the business model for Ansett became far too unsustainable. It could survive within the duopoly between Qantas and itself as Qantas too was heavily controlled by the TWU, both airlines routinely would charge around $600.00for a return ticket to Melbourne.

When new, non union regulated players like Compass and Virgin entered using the European Low Cost Carrier model, Qantas and Ansett were forced to sell tickets below costs thinking they'd muscle out hte other players like Qantas and Ansett had done before with compass mk1. Unfortunately for Ansett, Virgin had international backing and wasn't soon going to be bullied, and they went on a massive fleet advancement ordering up to 30 new planes with options for 30 more. Around that time Ansett was all but in receivership with maintenance issues grounding its 767 fleet with cracks appearing around the elevators of atleast 6 planes, and maintenance records being found to be erroneous. Then 911 happened. A series of blunders led to the last line of credit and yet another bailout given by the government evaporating rapidly amongst a massive line of creditors, and the company foundered.

Ostensibly, the same thing killing Qantas now killed Ansett then.