Could there be a bigger f
k you from management?
As someone else said, lets look at the figures. I mean, what is one paying for when they purchase a staff travel ticket? An economy fare one way from Melbourne to Sydney is $30 excluding taxes. So what is in the 30 bucks for Qantas? Surely that covers any processing costs of the ticket, extra baggage processing if you are carrying it and any other little costs such as helping pay a little to keep the Staff Travel people employed and the website running etc. Perhaps at the very most all of those costs would equal $15 and I reckon I am being very generous. Now lets see what you get for that other $15: No confirmed seat, ie it doesn't cost them a cent for them to uplift you (apart from the extra fuel which I will talk about in a minute), you might get a crappy meal and a drink if you are lucky (or unlucky
) all of which would come to the total of $5 at the most, and lets no forget the fact that you would only have what was left over from all the fare paying pax so you may get a ticket with no catering so we can even ignore this cost for some sectors. Apart from that you do not get anything else. Qantas makes a healthy $10-15 dollars on a seat they would otherwise have made $0 - not one cent!
So to my point. If there is already $10-15 dollars in spare in the price of a staff travel MEL-SYD ticket, then surely that is enough to cover the extra thimble of fuel you are likely to cost the company on such a sector. I mean a short sector like that, I can't remember the figures, but I think it was something quite small like less than an extra 100kg or fuel to carry an extra 1000kg of fuel to destination, so going by that rational, a staff passenger weighting about 100kg (70kg person + 30kg of bags or something like that) would cost about 10kg of fuel, and I think that is being generous. And wow, hang on a minute, that 10kg is about $10 and already covered in the cost of the ticket!
I cannot see how they can justify an extra $22 PER SECTOR on top of the already inflated price of a staff ticket. Not to mention its $22 whether you are going CBR-SYD or BNE-PER
I also just want to add that I do think we are lucky to have staff travel but I think it is a perk or the airline industry and a part of the reward for working such strange hours in all different time zones etc. and there are not too many other jobs where you will not be home for Christmas, New Years, Easter, children’s and partner’s birthdays etc. etc. the list goes on. I think its not an unfair perk to have, the same way as is being advertised on the TV the employees of Holden get discounts on cars etc etc. But management is trying to further disengage us by taking away these rights (or not taking away but making them so unattractive that they are not worth using).
Anyway, lets do the same figures again on a SYD-LAX sector. An economy ticket without tax is still a whopping $135 (this is what they charge you for a seat that would otherwise have gone empty). So what do we have again? say $15-20 for the ticket and baggage processing, keeping staff travel running etc. That leaves $115. Now again a little more food perhaps (forgetting about business class, its $270 a ticket for some unknown bloody reason, I doubt that you get an extra $135 worth of food and drink, its just another example of greediness and disrespect from Qf management - but that’s another issue (the extra $135 that is
)). So back to my point, you might eat $15 worth of their food. Now remaining money in the ticket is $100. So Qantas has now made $100 dollars from this seat which they would otherwise have made them 0, nothing, a duck. And lets look at the 'incredible' amount of fuel that would have had to have been uploaded from using this extra seat. Say roughly it is about 500kgs of fuel needed to carry another ton of fuel to destination and we had an average weight of a staff pax being about 100kg, then it would mean they would cost an extra 50-60kgs of fuel. Again I think this is being extremely generous. So what to we have? Even with this extra 50kgs of fuel, Qf still stand to make at least $40 dollars from a seat that otherwise would have made 0. I would have thought a good deal for all concerned? Qf make a little on the side from a seat that otherwise would have given them nothing and the staff member feels good about being able to use on of the few 'perks' of the job during their time off and thus perhaps feel a little more 'engaged'. But NO but that not enough for the people running this joke that is becoming Qf. They want to stick an farcical extra $35 per sector. It is disgusting.
As many people have talked about, domestically now it is almost a cheap to get a return fare with virgin and have a confirmed seat. Now I must admit a year ago I would have paid the extra and got a seat with Qantas and never have contemplated flying with Virgin, however moves like this from greedy Qf management which have no plausible explanation (or at least none have been put forward to us) are starting to change my views because they are obviously trying to make it clear that they don't give a stuff about us, so why should we give a stuff about them? Its not the way I want to be or feel but the leadership from the top down in this company is nothing short of abysmal.
