Ansett Australia

The book obviously charts your quite rapid ascent once you got into aviation, which wasn't necessarily where you thought you were going to go initially.

and the stellar career that you had from Erlingus, Ansett, Qantas, set up Jetstar, which is the low cost carrier within Qantas, and then to obviously the top job.

And yet over that career of many decades, it feels like you were probably defined, which is maybe the case for all CEOs, by a relatively small number of very big either controversies or crises that you had to navigate.

We touched on too already the big safety issue in 2010, which thankfully worked out okay after the engine failure, the grounding of the fleet.

And I go through my

career about how that was reinforced.

I worked for Ansett, the other Australian airline that went bankrupt a year after I left it to move to Qantas.

And I could see the dynamic of a company that did nothing and just didn't restructure the way it needed to do.

The book obviously charts your quite rapid ascent once you got into aviation, which wasn't necessarily where you thought you were going to go initially.

and the stellar career that you had from Erlingus, Ansett, Qantas, set up Jetstar, which is the low cost carrier within Qantas, and then to obviously the top job.

And yet over that career of many decades, it feels like you were probably defined, which is maybe the case for all CEOs, by a relatively small number of very big either controversies or crises that you had to navigate.

We touched on too already the big safety issue in 2010, which thankfully worked out okay after the engine failure, the grounding of the fleet.

And I go through my

career about how that was reinforced.

I worked for Ansett, the other Australian airline that went bankrupt a year after I left it to move to Qantas.

And I could see the dynamic of a company that did nothing and just didn't restructure the way it needed to do.

...

the day after that was unfortunately Ansett Airlines, uh, collapsed, and that was huge news, uh, as well back in the day.

A lot of people I, uh, know or knew that worked there and, uh, caused all, uh, all amount of stress and problems and upset and hurt because, uh, many of the, uh, people that worked there, you know, there were couples, husband and wife both worked for the company, and then all of a sudden from having two incomes, they had nothing.

So it really caused a lot of, uh, financial grief.

And well, hurt too.

It was very much a family airline.

So yeah, Ansett went and that allowed Virgin to flourish.

They were, uh, but my understanding is they were probably not too far away from folding, but once Ansett went, that was it.

Auto Masters are CanStar Blue's Customer Satisfaction Award winners.

On this day, Ansett said enough.

Enough is enough.

Leaving 16,000 workers out of a job.

2001.

Matty Rogers.

You would have been an Ansett man.

Yeah.

And yeah, I don't know much more to say about all that, but yeah, it's a bit of a rough week and hopefully we can get some answers there soon.

Something else that's sort of happened this week is the 25 year anniversary of the collapse of Ansett Australia.

I've seen lots of fantastic posts and stories online and for a lot of you that don't really know or understand, like I think Ansett really marked the end of an era, if you like, of the airlines of old, if you like.

I was so fortunate to grow up in the Ansett family with dad working at Ansett between Adelaide, Melbourne and Perth.

Auto Masters are CanStar Blue's Customer Satisfaction Award winners.

On this day, Ansett said enough.

Enough is enough.

Leaving 16,000 workers out of a job.

2001.

Matty Rogers.

You would have been an Ansett man.

Yeah.