Source: AAP Author: 10/31/2007
Subject Concerned: Opinion Airlines
Former airline chief Sir Rod Eddington has warned leading airlines not to be financially complacent.
"The (aviation) industry has been cash flow negative ... since the Wright Brothers," Sir Rod told an aviation conference in Canberra.
He raised the failure of the once massive TWA and PanAM airlines as proof no airline was safe from bankruptcy.
"No one is guaranteed survival," Sir Rod said.
"The carriers that succeed will be the carriers that adapt the most successfully."
Sir Rod, a former head of Cathay Pacific, Ansett and British Airways, is now a director of News Corp Ltd.
Airlines would need to adapt to a whole host of challenges, he said, including climate change, pilot shortages and airport congestion.
But he offered plenty of praise alongside his warning, saying aviation safety had consistently improved since the beginning of last century.
He recounted an anecdote of speaking with an aviation boss who said there had been a time when airlines would buy more planes than they needed because they expected to lose one plane a year.
"Those days are long gone," Sir Rod said.