Losing altitude - the downing of Howard & Costello

The reality of looming market dominance by an 800 kilogram gorilla like United Airlines-Continental Airlines-Qantas will scare the bejesus out of Singapore Airlines, Emirates and Virgin's managers. And rightly so.

They don’t know it, but the heat is squarely on the Prime Minister and his Treasurer after not rejecting the takeover. This could be their undoing. If he's lucky, Mr Costello will revert to being no more than the Member for Higgins. Assuming he isn’t thrown out of Parliament altogether. And as for Mr Howard, his “all the way with Geoff Dixon” attitude, could be his undoing as well.

Many Australians thought that Peter Costello was one politician who understood that what’s good for Qantas is by definition, bad for Australian consumers. He has often argued to break Qantas’ monopoly on many routes.

Well Minister, the time for argument is over. The time for action has arrived. It's time to inaugurate open skies between Australia and the rest of the world.

It’s time to wise up to what a buy out of Qantas really means to aviation competition and to the support act (in maintenance) Qantas plays to the Royal Australian Air Force.

And it’s time to count in the thousands, the numbers of jobs that will be decimated by the Monopolistic Marsupial in the quest to asset strip and beautify it prior to a potential trade sale to another airline. Granted Mr Costello, I am not including the low wage jobs the private equity consortium will no doubt create for reservations staff in Chennai, maintenance staff in Bangkok and catering crews in Ho Chi Minh City.

Treasurer, put the interests of the traveling public first and the profits of the billionaire’s factory a distant second. And pray, pray, that UBS rejects the leveraged buy out, and in turn saves your bacon. And that of your government's.