@Ramallah If you are looking for someone to blame on Ansett you should also blame News Corp. Air New Zealand bought TNT's 50% share of Ansett in 1996 but News retained the other 50% and managerial control. A print publishing company doesn't know how to run an airline so the business was milked for dividends to News Corp while the business languished, with too many highly paid management layers and the fleet ballooned into one of the biggest hodge-podges of various aircraft types - which scaled up crewing and maintenance costs way above what an airline with even a half lean set of equipment types should incur.
Still, Air NZ were so desperate for an Australian foothold (they'd been denied a stake in Qantas back when it listed in 1995) that they bought News' 50% share in 2000 hoping to try and right the ship, but by then this horse was destined for the glue factor. I knew one of the consultants who Air NZ brought in to try to rationalise the fleet and operations and the situation was so dire that the capital infusions which would have been required were almost impossible for Air NZ to fund. The wheels were really coming off when the 11 September 2001 attacks in NY effectively ended any hope.
The original Virgin largely avoided all these issues but unfortunately Borghetti ran the business without enough eye to costs in trying to be another Qantas. Just one small example is his need to provide pyjamas on long-haul business class. Airline margins are slim enough that you really need to be able to charge a significant revenue premium to cover the cost of these sorts of incidentals - a revenue premium which Virgin Australia's international business class did not get. The cost of the lounges, expansion of fleet types, International itself (a vanity project which should have been left to Virgin's partners), it's no surprise that Air NZ bailed out of their shareholding in 2016 because I'm sure they didn't want to be burnt in Australia for a second time.
