crikey.com.au
Holiday shift at Qantas
Pemberton Strong
07 January 2005
The boss might be on holiday, but the work of replying to QANTAS's critics must go on.
How to ruin a holiday break. It has fallen to Qantas Executive General Manager, John Borghetti to be the airline's designated letter writer in reply to letters in The Australian Financial Review.
That's a big change and the usual DLW, CEO Geoff Dixon, must be out of the country or on leave for Mr Borghetti to have to step up and fire two missives to the AFR letter pages this week in reply to what must be annoying letters from Qantas watchers or users.
CEO Geoff is the usual writer. Who can forget his blast at the attitude of the inhabitants of Hamilton Island in late November who dared criticise the Jetstar service in and out of the resort, and the sorts of passengers delivered to the Whitsunday playground by the Qantas subsidiary.
A classic, along with his letter several months earlier kicking off the un-level and unfair playing field argument with big naughty government-supported foreign airlines competing unfairly with Aussie battler Qantas.
Both classics in the usual 'in your face' or 'junkyard dog' style practised at times by the Qantas CEO.
Either he's on holidays or having a bex and a good lie down somewhere where the AFR is not delivered.
So two letters from the management hangar at Qantas HQ at Mascot from Mr Borghetti.
One was replying to a writer to the AFR from a week ago having a nice go at Qantas' belief in competition and criticising poor service and then one Thursday replying to comments made in another letter about issues raised by Rex abandoning the Sydney-Canberra route.
Of the two, Thursday's letter is a better effort from John, or whoever scripted the letter for him to sign.
The original letter raised the usual issues about Qantas' monopoly on the route with Rex and Virgin Blue disappearing from the service, wondered about Qantas's so called "best fare of the day" idea. The Borghetti letter provided the standard responses, but finished nicely by pointing that while "much had been made of the fact that Qantas will be the sole operator between Sydney and Canberra, Rex is the sole operator on about half of its 31 routes."
I know two wrongs do not make a right or somesuch, but it was a nice point to those critics worried about the Qantas monopoly that if they worried about monopoly generally, then Rex should also be taken to task.
The first letter on Tuesday though was a bit tougher to handle as it was another in the steady dribble of letters from AFR readers complaining about the level of service they have experienced flying Qantas and the attitudes shown to them by Qantas staff or the airline generally.
When layered on top of complaints about Qantas' attitude to competition, Borghetti could only trot out the usual platitudes that Australia had a very 'liberal' aviation market compared to the rest of the world.
And despite those complaints about poor service Qantas continued to win awards for its customer service. Standard arguments, but given the tone of the comments in the letter, I fear they fell on deaf ears.
But there was a third letter (on Wednesday)from a Qantas customer who repeated what many travelers have been saying in the past couple of years. "At every point of measure I can feel Qantas is cost cutting," the letter in Wednesday's AFR said.
Starting with "Each time I travel with Qantas I wrestle with a letter of complaint only to despair, what's the use?" there was an element of despair about the national carrier.
A good way to start a letter because from correspondence to the AFR and Crikey over the past few months, that's exactly how many Qantas travellers are feeling.
There are not many cheerleaders out there for the Mangled Roo.
It is a pity the letters at the AFR cannot be accessed other than by joining the paper's declining premium site(like Qantas in fact). They are worth reading, especially the one from Tony Forrest of St Leonards in Sydney, in Wednesday's paper.
So the question now is, will Mr Borgehetti write for the third time in a week to answer Mr Forrest's very heartfelt letter of complaint, or will this one be allowed to slide through to the keeper in the hope that no one else reads it?
A friend of this writer has had an ongoing battle to find out how you join the really sharp end of the Qantas gravy train. No, not the board, but the Captain's club, where chair people and VIPs end up.
So far one letter, received in the past week to a letter sent to Qantas last August.
A reply has been sent back, with copies to Geoff Dixon and others inside the airline wondering why Qantas is so arbitrary and whether the fact that the person concerned is CEO of a major Non-Government Organisation and whether that has any thing to do with their exclusion from the Captain's Club.
So far Geoff Dixon nor John Borghetti have not replied. Strange that, writing to newspapers about customer complaints, but not replying to customers who write directly with queries and complaints.
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