Why me? :-|
If QF went down the tube tomorrow, well I'd be about 155k points out of pocket. Unlike DJ, from what I've heard, I don't think QFF points are held in trust. I'd also instantly lose my OWE status.
I'd say basically just what
samh004 said: we'd have an Ansett like situation. People might get burnt with loss of points/lifetime subscriptions/lounge subscriptions/current bookings etc., we'd have some sort of semi- to psuedo-monopoly within Australia, but then everyone moves on. I mean, what else could you do?
If QF/JQ go under, then yeah DJ would be Australia's #1 carrier and flag carrier for that matter. If not DJ, would it be TT? I'll be well in my cold dead grave before that happens.
As for would DJ raise airfares, quite possibly - after all, they are a public company too that needs to answer to shareholders, but you'd hope that the monopoly position would not go to their heads as much as QF, so to speak. DJ certainly would be scrambling to find a lot more seats than it would have if QF/JQ went belly up; the only way that'll happen is through capital expenditure and/or raising fares to even up the supply/demand balance (don't forget there is a significant corporate market that DJ would need to pick up almost immediately if QF/JQ went down - even if DJ appropriate 20-50% of this market in the near future, the remainder would still be huge). I mean, what would you do if suddenly your demand is about 30-60% greater than your supply? I'm assuming DJ don't have huge reserves of planes available, and you can't just wheel out a fresh 737 at a click of the fingers. I guess they might start pulling off the VA 777s to help cope with domestic demand (i.e. try to work them almost around the clock). Then again, VA might be seeking immediate approvals for increases on all the void left behind by QF (or scrambling for high-capacity codeshare agreements).
Mind you, I don't know if the government would propose a similar tax that was levied to bail out AN workers of their benefits (the $10 seat tax or whatever it was), so at least in the short term airfares might increase artificially.
That's probably an odd thing that would be difficult to deal with: all the QF workers out of a job. I'm sure most people couldn't care less, but like the AN situation if no one
will care they will be
forced to care about it, one way or another. In many cases the QF FAs might be considered too old to be employed by DJ
.
As for what
I'd do next - I'd probably use Velocity only for domestic but not pursue status with them, unless they decide to join an alliance and/or the upcoming changes to Velocity are profound, or if Velocity will forge reciprocal agreements on FFPs with Skywards. Perhaps a lounge subscription, but that's it. Not really interested in flying TT - anytime soon or in the future.
As for international, Star Alliance.
Now the other scenario might be QF/JQ might be "supported" in a similar way that JL was held back from completely collapsing under. Mind you, in that case I'd still be tempted to move, since it'll probably mean QF won't fly to squat internationally and probably just might cut a significant portion of its domestic as well. Capital investment would probably cease, too, and that isn't good.
Bottom line is no use bawling and legal mumbo-jumbo if QF goes under. Just reposition your strategy. Detailed enough?
