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and to think the Minardi sale was to raise funds for this farce-
Former Minardi owner Paul Stoddart has decided to suspend all scheduled flights of his OzJet Airlines due to financial difficulties, just four months after the Australian airline took off.
Stoddart, who sold Minardi to Red Bull last fall, said there were not enough clients for his budget all-business-class service between Melbourne and Sydney.
"Unfortunately, for whatever reasons, we have not had the support we needed to operate in that environment against big, established carriers," Stoddart said in a statement today.
"It's very, very disappointing, particularly, I'm sure, for those people who had started travelling regularly with us between Melbourne and Sydney and many of our very diligent and loyal employees.
"Sad to say, there have not been enough of those regular customers. We will now concentrate, with a reduced workforce, on charter operations."
Stoddart, who made his fortune in aviation, admitted he himself lost money on the OzJet venture.
"The scheduled services experience has been very costly to me personally," the Australian said, "but my thoughts are more for those who have worked so tirelessly only to find that, as hard as we have tried, ultimately scheduled services were not successful."
OzJet will continue to offer charter flights, and the company will continue to run a minimum of two Boeing 737 and 30 per
cent of its staff.
[Edited on 12-3-0606 by Ger]
Comments
how can you start something, especially an airline, with an operational budget for just 4 months??
[Edited on 12-3-0606 by forzaminardi]
It is a bloody conservative market and their marketing strategy was not brilliant. I ended up flying the airline on two return trips to Sydney and found it OK. Certainly, returning on an 8:00pm flight with plenty of room and a proper meaol with a delightful red wine was a good end to a hard day.
To get an idea of the resistance, I got a corporate quote from them and did some sums for our lot here. The Sydney Melbourne spend for us is $150k annually. By choosing cheapest flights on the internet across Virgin Blue and Qantas and applying a factor across all the fare types (sometimes you have to have a fully flexible fare structure and other times you can safely book a fixed time) I came up with an annual cost of $108k. The quote from Ozjet, which was fully flexible on all flights (a big advantage when you have to ammend travel times at a moment's notice) brought the annual spend down to $102k. The proposal died without serious consideration. No particualarly good reason either.
As far as the aircraft are concerned, apart from one flight I found them acceptable. Certainly they are in no worse condition than Qantas' hard working 767 300s on the same route. Some folks thought that their operating costs, particularly fuel was against them, but these airplanes were fully depreciated and their CEO had acknowledged that they were breaking even with less than 50% load factor. The problem is that they could not attract that 50%.
I believe that the airline is going to try its hand at charter work which in itself is an untried concept in this country. Whilst Europe abounds with charter airlines, the scheduled services hold an iron grip on the market and no-one has ever really tried it. There is certainly room to try. The seasonal flights from places like Brisbane to Queenstown in NZ for the skiers is a viable option, as is package tours to Bali and other points in the Pacific and Asia that don't support scheduled services.
So maybe they will find a niche, who knows.
I think what is important is that Paul continues to provide folks like the Sawbones with opportunities to parade their rampant optimism.
You don't have to be Kenneth Galbraith to realise that Stoddarts business approach was not going to cut the mustard in the ultra competitive airline business. How many Major US carriers are operating under Chapter 11.
Your use of the perjorative term Sawbones is rather obsolete. My specialty is orthopaedic sports medicine. The use of the saw in surgery went out with the ark. However it seems to be thriving down under...
Interesting complete misuse of a word there.
Do they not use saws in surgery any more? How DO they cut bone then, one wonders? And why are these guys still in business?
http://www.surgicaltools.com/index.php?main_page=index&cPath=13_104_782
Perjorative is a good word though. Very correct. Tell you what is thriving 'DOWN UNDER'. Total absence of abeisance based on somebody's job.
obeisance
n 1: bending the head or body or knee as a sign of reverence or submission or shame [syn: bow, bowing] 2: the act of obeying; dutiful or submissive behavior with respect to another person [syn: obedience] [ant: disobedience]
Here's another good word
vilify
v : spread negative information about; To make vicious and defamatory statements about. See Synonyms at malign
It neatly describes your approach to all things Stoddart.
The reasons for Amercan Airlines being financially strapped are complex and historic. It starts with deregulation and the whirlwind romance of People Express, and goes through many iterations that take in, among other things, the catastrophic effects of an industry shutdown through the September 11 crisis. It is also important to note that the US and Australian markets differ just a tad. There are 300 odd million people in the US, with cities and regions spread across its length and breadth. There are 20 million people and less than 20 destinations in Australia that are served by scheduled jet airlines. Whilst both countries carry approximately twice their populations by air each year, the US network carries fewer per capita passengers to each destination.
Now here is the interesting bit; the Sydney-Melbourne route carries 7 million passengers per year. That makes it one the five busiest routes in the worl, and surprise, surprise, it's the one Stoddart targeted.
Now it is not my intention to provide a pocket history of success in the airline industry (indeed, it is one of the most marginal businesses to get into), but rather to show your one-liner to be about as credible as a surgeon attempting a limb resection armed with a computer and some good intentions.
Face it buddy; you never post in the pub (an abortive attempt to talk about elite winter sports events notwithstanding), and the only reason you did this time was to -see nifty V word above- stick it to Stoddart.
Now you will have to excuse me whilst I go and destroy all of these technical gizmos that are the root of all evil.
Call me.