virgin blue to lure business flyers, page-3

Good on the new guy. It's great to see him set the company up to compete with the organ grinder (Qantas) - and not just the monkey (Jetstar). The race to the price bottom for economy seats has just about gone as far as it can; maintain market share here, but tackle another segment.

Business class travel is growing with the recovery and is high margin. Part of the 'zing' with the original Freddie Laker London to New York flights (the first low cost airline experiment) was robbing the legacy airlines of their sense of entitlement to passenger dollars; and the resulting astonishingly high prices that they charged so arrogantly. There is a whiff of that 'port and cigars' sense of entitlement with Qantas and business class; it's their 'pot of gold' at the end of the recession - money in the bank that has already been factored in. Flying business class should not mean paying over the odds; there is a screaming need for some competition in this area - and an ex-Qantas bloke knows that better than anybody. He probably considers a better value business class as low hanging fruit. It might work.