red q ? asia one ? or failure ?, page-57

Hi webzone

"This was likely the real deal they wanted to get done and RedQ may have been a smokescreen."

Unlikely mate IMO,
There was always a plan to expand Jetstar international operations to places where there is little or no competition from low cost carriers. Such as Japan, only one startup low cost carrier Air Asia. Jetstar Japan is pulling out all stops to be the first in the regular low cost services.

Red Q premium carrier was and is designed to make Qantas pilots to pull their heads in. It probably never had much chance of success, but if it got of the ground, any new premium services out of Oz and beyond would be operated by Red Q. Number of Qantas full service flights would be reduced progressively over time as the Qantas pilots retired or died of the old age.
The way the industrial laws are ATM, Qantas can not compulsory retire pilots after reaching some arbitrary age.
They have tried it, arguing that in order to fly a commercial jet to US air space you have to be under 55 years of age.
Pilots took the company to Anti-discrimination Court and won
(or company withdrew, not exactly sure here) and pilots were re-instated. The problem can be managed by rostering mixed age crew anyway and first officer under age of 55 is the "Officer Flying" technically in charge in US air space while the ancient captain (if rostered at all) is either on his scheduled rest period or assisting the FO in charge.

As far as I know other countries do not have age restrictions on pilots and so, as long as the ancient pilots can pass their stringent yearly License Renewal test
they can continue flying.
To make these pilots redundant would not be easy, if they did not co-operate and in any case hugely expensive.

You could probably start small low cost airline with all that redundancy payouts.

We got to thank Johnie Howard for all this shamozle.
He was worried that there would not be enough workers around to fill all the available jobs in our booming economy and so he made compulsory retirement age illegal, and subject to Age Discrimination laws.

Ever since many businesses are stuck with aging and sometimes under-performing workers who can not be pushed out, unless the business undergoes industrial "restructure" and pays some of them off. Their positions are no longer required under the new business structure and they get their package and leave. It is a very expensive way to loose a few old tired workers an bring with it more problems than it solves.
Remaining employees are expected to pick up the extra work
previously done by the old timers, because the local manager would look silly, if he asked senior management for more staff, since he just paid out a million or two to make 5 or 10 people leave . So he will need another restructure down the track, arguing the business has changed or grown or whatever.
Sometimes I think Alice in the Wonderland was a documentary, not a fiction.