And even if customers more broadly were to accept – as Qantas is at pains to argue – that there are no guarantees around timeliness, they expect their rights as consumers will kick in when there are inevitable delays. (What constitutes an “inevitable” delay is still up for debate in Australia.)
Qantas are correct, there are no guarantees around timeliness. Delays and cancellations are and have always been a part of airline operations. I’ll call bull**** on a large number of cancelled or delayed flights in the last several years though. When your MEL laden aircraft is dragged onto the bay, or is late out of maintenance due to insufficient staff, due to outsourcing and continuously declining pay and conditions, the delay is only inevitable in that it was caused by the organisation claiming to not be at fault…..the victim of inevitable and unavoidable delays themselves if you believe the spin. And when your flight is cancelled last minute because crews have gone out of hours and don’t think carrying the can for a management team bent demoralising and denigrating the people they are now begging to extend and operate fatigued…..the delay is only inevitable because of a set of dogmatic ideals put in place by the organisation claiming to be, again, not at fault. And the push back drivers, caterers, baggage handlers, ground staff….the list goes on and on and on and on. The only inevitability to all this is that the fools who ‘run’ this airline are just that, fools. They fool one another that they are great stewards of the industry, and they have certainly fooled numerous previous governments that they should be able to continue to use our national carrier as a personal cash cow. I hope the ACCC implements such crippling limitations that the current mob fvck off and allow some real airline people in to resurrect the company.