Virgin Australia records $355 million loss

Just shows how much money the big three Virgin backers are willing to lose in order to hurt Qantas (not helped by the fact that Joyce and Co are incompetent when it comes to fighting back)

I assume you mean people commenting on the Qantas dismal performance.  Not everyone is a troll simply bashing Qantas, Qantas management have been disastrous for their shareholders and their customers. I would like the ability to fly Qantas international from Perth but cannot now.  So I am forced on to other airlines where I am then penalised by Qantas loyalty.  This isn't trolling.  It is fact. 

I'd say there's not much to say, because you expect young businesses in growth phases to run into red ink (particularly in the capital intensive aviation industry). Qantas, on the other hand, is a well established business in the maintenance phase of its life cycle - it already had dominant market share, it just had to maintain it. You'd expect well established business to turn profit easily, and recent entrants to invest for future returns.

I would hardly call a 14 year old airline a young business...

Both results basically show that they went hard at each other's throats and this is the result. The only issue Qantas also had was that it was also competing against international airlines as well as Virgin (who, let's face it, is just domestic).

Expect VA is a relaunch of what was only a LCC called Virgin Blue. It's a fallacy to suggest the start date of the current business belongs to its very different early incarnation. That's like saying Qantas' current business is no different from when it was predominately a mail and light freight carrier in its earliest days!

It's still an established business who for a long time had a stable share of the market. It decided to start going after more market share and so it's now spending more to do that. it's a very simple analogy to say because Qantas is older that it doesn't have to work to keep its customers. As VA is throwing money to lure pax, qantas needs to do the same. Hence red ink everywhere.

im not saying that the qf management is perfect, but to simply say it should be easy for qf to turn profit easily is frankly foolish.

While I wouldn't decry it as trolling - it is, of course, a sobering reality - I must say the silence on VA and JB is unnerving compared to the bloodcurdling screams for AJ's head over QF.

Sorry tmsmile, but that statement simply does not hold water. The Federal Transport dept stats clearly show VA started off with not much market share, which gradually built up over the last couple of years. That was what the airfare war of the last couple of years was all about - Qantas bleeding money to protect its majority market share (by flooding the market with over-allocated capacity, meaning plenty of cheap seats), VA paying over the odds to steal customers away from Qantas. You even state as much in your comments, while still trying to hold to this idea that both are/were mature businesses. 

If Qantas/Joyce wasn't so he'll bent on its/his flawed S-curve market dominance theory, Qantas could have easily managed its resources to maintain its decent profit margin. Simply put, Joyce overplayed his hand and the airline/the industry paid the price accordingly.