Qantas statement to ASX. Not Happy, Ben

Ben Sandilands over at Plane Talking is not happy about Qantas, its buyback of shares, or its management, or its CEO or even its Chairman.

Ben has way more experience at watching the airline industry than me, so I tend to respect his experience. He pulls no punches:

A careful reading of the full disclosures to the ASX this morning show that the misery is significantly self inflicted through a determination to add capacity to the domestic market of up to 9%, which means a fare war with Virgin Australia rather than any effort to do something about the state of the Qantas product or its loss of competitive advantage to a much better managed entity with an engaged rather than alienated work force.

Don’t hold back Ben:

No matter how it is read, it does not claim in any way that Qantas will successfully deal with the Virgin threat other than by adding seats which will force it down into lower yielding territory, and raise operating expenses by flying more empty seats than before.

What it does read like is a page taken from the business school playbooks that wrought substantial damage to legacy US and European carriers in similar price and capacity wars.

Ben, I think you have said enough – oh wait on, just something a little more damning . . .

Shareholders who have been burned by the worst chairman and most incompetent CEO ever foisted on Qantas shareholders have nothing to celebrate either from being locked in to a trashed share price, or an incredibly disappointing outlook.

Oh Ben – we hear you.

Scource: Plane Talking