Sixty-six years of aviation tradition ended yesterday when iconic Australian airline Ansett took to the skies for the last time.
Hundreds of Ansett workers were gathering at domestic terminals across the country to bid farewell to the carrier, which will take off on its last commercial flight from the Western Australia state city of Perth yesterday.
PHOTO: AFP
"It's going to be truly awful," said Julie Bignell, assistant branch secretary for the Australian Services Union in Queensland state. "Given that Ansett people have always been a big family, a lot of them will want to be there just to say goodbye to each other."
Once the country's biggest airline, Ansett was put into voluntary administration in mid-September and later grounded, throwing most of its 16,000 staff out of work.
About 700 people will be kept on in the short term to do work such as maintenance on aircraft and refunding tickets.
Under its parent company, Air New Zealand, Ansett had amassed major debts because of a price war in the Australian market and maintenance problems that forced it to ground a number of planes early last year.
With government support, Ansett's administrators, the accounting firm Andersens, managed to get some planes back into the air while the search for a potential buyer began.
Late last year, Australian businessmen Lindsay Fox and Solomon Lew offered A$1.8 billion (US$940 million) for a pared-back version of the airline. The deal was approved by shareholders and creditors.
But last week, just one day before the sale deadline, Fox and Lew's Tesna consortium pulled out of the deal. They blamed stalled negotiations with the government and airport owners over Ansett's leases of domestic terminals across Australia.
Most of Ansett's final 67 scheduled flights yesterday were fully booked, or close to capacity, the airline said. Its last flight will leave Perth at 11.45pm local time, arriving in Sydney today.
Ansett was founded by Australian aviation pioneer Sir Reginald Ansett in 1936 in a small town in Victoria state. To overcome laws at the time forbidding competition with the state's railways, the fledgling airline offered flights for free, but charged for the piece of fruit that passengers received onboard.
By 1969, the small fleet had become Australia's largest domestic airline.
The carrier saw its share of passengers dwindle over the last 10 years as Australia's international airline, Qantas, entered the domestic market. Further competition also took its toll as cut-price airline Impulse -- now owned by Qantas -- and Virgin Blue took to the skies in 2000, leading to a fare war.
Bob Ansett, the son of the airline's founder, said it was clear from early on that saving Ansett would be difficult.
"A lot of people were driven by ego and self-interest and greed and in the end it was the airline that paid the price," Ansett told Australian Broadcasting Corp radio.
The nation's competition watchdog, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, has vowed to keep a close eye on airfares as analysts warned prices would skyrocket with the demise of Ansett and the return of a duopoly in the national aviation industry.
A car bomb killed a senior Russian general in southern Moscow yesterday morning, the latest high-profile army figure to be blown up in a blast that came just hours after Russian and Ukrainian delegates held separate talks in Miami on a plan to end the war. Kyiv has not commented on the incident, but Russian investigators said they were probing whether the blast was “linked” to “Ukrainian special forces.” The attack was similar to other assassinations of generals and pro-war figures that have either been claimed, or are widely believed to have been orchestrated, by Ukraine. Russian Lieutenant General Fanil Sarvarov, 56, head
SAFETY FIRST: Double the number of police were deployed at the Taipei Marathon, while other cities released plans to bolster public event safety Authorities across Taiwan have stepped up security measures ahead of Christmas and New Year events, following a knife and smoke bomb attack in Taipei on Friday that left four people dead and 11 injured. In a bid to prevent potential copycat incidents, police deployments have been expanded for large gatherings, transport hubs, and other crowded public spaces, according to official statements from police and city authorities. Taipei Mayor Chiang Wan-an (蔣萬安) said the city has “comprehensively raised security readiness” in crowded areas, increased police deployments with armed officers, and intensified patrols during weekends and nighttime hours. For large-scale events, security checkpoints and explosives
A magnitude 7.0 earthquake struck off Yilan at 11:05pm yesterday, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. The epicenter was located at sea, about 32.3km east of Yilan County Hall, at a depth of 72.8km, CWA data showed There were no immediate reports of damage. The intensity of the quake, which gauges the actual effect of a seismic event, measured 4 in Yilan County area on Taiwan’s seven-tier intensity scale, the data showed. It measured 4 in other parts of eastern, northern and central Taiwan as well as Tainan, and 3 in Kaohsiung and Pingtung County, and 2 in Lienchiang and Penghu counties and 1
‘POLITICAL GAME’: DPP lawmakers said the motion would not meet the legislative threshold needed, and accused the KMT and the TPP of trivializing the Constitution The Legislative Yuan yesterday approved a motion to initiate impeachment proceedings against President William Lai (賴清德), saying he had undermined Taiwan’s constitutional order and democracy. The motion was approved 61-50 by lawmakers from the main opposition Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the smaller Taiwan People’s Party (TPP), who together hold a legislative majority. Under the motion, a roll call vote for impeachment would be held on May 19 next year, after various hearings are held and Lai is given the chance to defend himself. The move came after Lai on Monday last week did not promulgate an amendment passed by the legislature that
RSS