QF actually upgraded its services to LST in the past couple of weeks from Dash 8-300 to Q400 aircraft.

Lets face it, the service you get from Qantas is no better than a budget carrier! In flight service? What is it? A muffin and water? Friendly, courteous staff? Where have they gone? Aircraft running on time? What day of the week? Check-in chaos and long queues at QF? It sucks.

I know this hurts alot of peoples feelings, I love aeroplanes and the airline industry too, but this is reality. Qantas is expensive for the quality of service they offer, I believe there is an element of Australian pride that keeps alot of Qantas customers returning to them. It is the brand name.

Qantas is nervous because Tiger Airways is launching a handful of services on the Sydney to Melbourne route? So what! Why is Qantas so afraid?

My bet is in ten years time, Virgin Blue and Vaustralia will hold a greater share of the market than Qantas/Jetstar... or at least it will be equal.

Come and bite my head off people... lol.

The muffin is nothing to rave about either! They are awful.

I'd rather pay for the privelage on JQ and fly return for the cost of a QF one way fare.

I agree with Andrew, I think there's very little chance of that happening. QF and JQ have taken respective market positions that - between them - enable the QF Group to set the terms of the Australian domestic market for the foreseeable future. Whether one likes them or not is irrelevant, their success will be determined by the economics of it.

I would suggest that - for reasons outlined in other posts I've made on the subject - airlines' results under the present circumstances (depressed economy, oil in the range $45-55, etc) won't reflect the market situation in 10 or even 5 years' time, and that in fact the analyses and press releases being put out early last year would be more in step with where we're headed. I will, however, qualify that by suggesting that a new runaway oil spike (well above the $140 levels we saw last year) would substantially weaken the cost leader positions adopted by Tiger (and to a reasonable extent, JQ), and may lead to re-thinking that end of the market.

Fun and games...

Don't forget Qantas offers a lot of service that Tiger does not offer, for example lounge access, frequent flyer (or shopper :D) program, connectivity (eg. baggage interlining) and an expansive domestic network. All of which keeps people (including myself) going back to Qantas.

Having said that however, I am certainly not complaining about the additional competition (and lower airfares) that Tiger will bring to the SYD-MEL route.

He worked for Aer Lingus, who at the time was a full service carrier, so hardly a cheapie airline. He seems to be doing a good job at Qantas.

As many have discussed before Jetstar was established to save Qantas from loosing market share in the domestic market and many suspected that most if not all their domestic flights might one day be transfered to the Jetstar brand. In the years that it has been in operation it has been slowly changing to the point where it is starting to become even more logical.

I am all for it if is save Qantas and offers people like us (the paying public) fair prices and a good choice of flights and connections.

Things have changed though, after a few flights myself on Aer Lingus in the past couple of years, they're a hellaver long way from full service these days. They make JQ look good and for me, that's saying something. I don't know if he had anything to do with the decline and I hope not if you know what I mean, re Qantas.

It was full service when Joyce worked at Aer Lingus, hence why I said "AT THE TIME". I am not sure specificaly when he worked there, but he has been with Qantas for 12 or so years and worked for Ansett before that, so it has been a while.

With Aer Lingus it was about 2-3 years ago they made the decision to go LCC on their short haul services. Long haul they are meant to be full services but never tried them long haul. On short haul they seem to follow more the Virgin Blue style LCC rather than Ryanair or Sleazyjet. Ironic as Ryanair own about 25% of Aer Lingus. These changes also co-incided with them leaving OneWorld.