Collapse of ansett

Essay by angela_131 July 2004

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Organizations rise and fall. While some are becoming the stars of their industries, others struggle for an extended period, struggle and comeback, or collapse altogether. The organizations, which have collapsed in recent time, are Ansett Airlines. Study the recent history of Ansett airlines in the category of ailed organization?. Provide some background about the organization before analyzing and describing how and why it failed, linking your discussion to management concepts and theories covered in this unit.

Ansett Airlines, Australia second largest, ceased operations in September 2001. With debts of $A3 billion it was placed in Administration on behalf of creditors. (Bartholomeauz, 2001) Anger and annoyance triggered a search for somebody to blame and many reports in the media, along with ministers in the Australian government, blamed the airlines management. This paper will begin by illustrating the history of the airline. Secondly it will outline the causes of the failure.

While Annett management might have been deficient, a factor that seems to have triggered the failure, a deeper issue is its principal cause. It is the policy of competitive markets imposed on Australia's domestic airlines by successive governments.

In 1935 Reg Ansett, a young businessman in rural Victoria who owned taxis, began a regular air service between Hamilton and Melbourne. (Gilchrist, 2001) The enterprise expanded and by the early 1950's was one of Australia's three largest domestic airlines. Ansett Airlines then took over ANA, its main rival and, under a regime known as the two airline polices shared a government regulated duopoly with TAA, a publicly owned Airline established in 1948 by the federal government. (Gilchrist, 2001) This was established on Australians domestic trunk routes linking the capital cities around the countries. Besides trunk routes, Ansett and TAA also operated on many provincial routes to outlying cities and towns.