Hi Paul,Yeah, well now Singapore has a large Oz partner with...

Hi Paul,

Yeah, well now Singapore has a large Oz partner with business class for their clients and access to all ports in Oz. Remember that Singapore was accelerated rapidly with quality ex-Qantas managers many years ago in the last big Qantas purge (circa 80's and 90's).

Qantas has always had large domestic access feeders (remember when Qantas was only an international airline - before deregulation). Now their domestic strength is huge.

Singapore crucially needs these direct feeders, and a quality one with quality business class to grow it's base and to advertise that like Qantas you can book straight through from Singers to anywhere in Oz with their 'quality' partner Virgin, whereas prior it fed Qantas - their very opposition! To be on anything like a Qantas level footing SING needed big access to OZ (much bigger than Tiger affords) not only for street cred, but for it's very future growth. Thus the new Virgin fits the bill absolutely perfectly. Make no mistake, this will be critical to both SING and VIR.

Sing owns 30% of Tiger (effectively the owner). Tiger makes money in Asia. Tiger loses money in Oz. Tiger Oz is from todays date obsolete and no longer required at all to SING. Tiger Oz is crucial to Virgin for them to form a new low cost product (all the full service heritage airlines are doing this to survive and prosper, it's the new world order).

Virgin Australia will be the premium product,and a budget no-frills, Jetstar like sister operation using the old Tiger base set-up as the No Frills off shoot - hence Virgin Lite. Tiger is a ready made walk up start, gift for VIR.

It's a big, Win - Win for both VIR and SING...

Huuummm....Me wonders whether SING will now start to buy say something like a 10 to 15% share of VBA, especially while aussies can't see the writing on the wall!