hahaha, the "unwashed masses" indeed, it sure didn't seem to...

hahaha, the "unwashed masses" indeed, it sure didn't seem to bother Princess Mary on her recent trip to Australia. What a great surprise it must have been for the Virgin passengers to have her jump on the plane in Hobart and Adelaide! I once sat next to a high-profile CEO of a top50 Aust company in the very back row of economy, he was very polite and was reading a book on ancient Egyptian mummified cats, which looked very interesting. Bit I digress..

I am invested in this company because I believe the story and want to make money off it. Maybe I'll be proved wrong, but the risk/return seems to stack up at the moment. Hopefully there will be considerable upside in the new alliances, getting Velocity moving and increasing the corporate flyers. Given VBA is trading at circa 0.7x book value verses QAN's 0.9x, I think that many of the strengths of QAN are already reflected in its shareprice. As a sidenote, Tiger trades on the Singapore exchange at over 4x book value, probably reflecting the potential for growth out of its Singapore operations more than Australia I would assume.

Personally I fly Melbourne/Sydney about once a week for work, generally on short notice. Flights have definitely started getting more expensive and the planes are getting more full, I will expect this will be reflected in the BITRE figures down the track. Apart from Tiger, who treated my sister badly, I will happily fly any airline and decide at the time of booking based on price and timings. I have access to the Qantas lounge but generally don't bother to use it as it inevitably leads to me eating the wrong types of foods and drinking too much. Like most passengers I have a list of likes and gripes about each airline. For instance, I like that Virgin (and occasionally Jetstar) allow you to enter via the front and rear doors, as unless you are near the front door on one of those widebody Qantas planes you can be stuck waiting for quite some time. I like I can watch the Friday night football live on the Virgin television set (for $5 of course). However, I do like that Qantas will give you a free beer after 4pm on a weekday & you don't pay extra to take your bags (although with their $7 CC booking fee you are effectively paying it anyway...).

Thanks for the BITRE link, interesting indeed. It does appear that on Melbourne-Sydney that Qantas (83%) is more reliable that Virgin (72%) and Tiger (73%), however Jetstar (69%) was worse still.

All IMO, good luck holders.