BFAABAA, your posts are increasingly interesting.

I disagree with your predictions and believe that the explanation you gave, is only a single perspective. There are several factors that drive air fares changes, namely:
- Market share and competition
- Demand
- Baseline cost
- many other factors (for example aspirations to gain new market share)

The Swine Flu episode is having an effect on all industries ( it may be a positive one because it's sort of dampening the recovery of economies, and hence softening increase in oil prices). But to say that this particular factor will determine airfares increases or decreases is far from being realistic.

We Australians, pay the highest fares to get out, or on average pay higher fares than if were to be departing from the destination country (there are exceptions of course, depending on specific markets and periods of demand etc).
The problem is that airlines recognise that Australians can be ripped off without much hassle, and so you see the airfares falling within a hidden gentlemen's agreement depending on destinations.

13.5k in Business is an absolute rip off. I could buy 4 First Class tickets with Emirates for the same price that I would have to pay if I chose to depart from Australia to the same origin I am departing from; and still have almost zero restrictions on cancellations and zero penalties as opposed to Australian origined tickets (couple of hundreds to cancel/refund, and to re-book/revalidate).

Dans6362, you could fly QF to Jakarta, and get a much cheaper Business class Emirates ticket return to Zurich for about 4.2kAUD.
You could also try the Philippine where the fare is about 3.7kAUD. You could get the same fare from Malaysia too.

I suppose you have enough QF points to take a return trip to MNL or JKT to catch your ticket with EK
On the way back you could get a return airfare (really cheap) from MNL or JKT if you had bought one way using the QF points.

Hope this helps. I know this sucks.