Knocked on the head

At a recent aviation conference in Sydney, Qantas CEO Alan Joyce publicly laid to rest the idea that his airline was looking to merge or acquire a large stake in another airline as part of the much vaunted push for consolidation in the industry.

Joyce’s predecessor at Qantas, Geoff Dixon, was a well known advocate for airline industry consolidation, and one of his parting moves before he left the top job was to instigate merger talks with British Airways. Joyce inherited those efforts but promptly backed away from the deal, citing an inability by the two airlines to decide on fair value, and in effect control of the new entity.