Originally Posted by Swingwing
QANTAS is a private company, whose obligations are to the people who provide the capital to run the business - that is, the debt and equity holders.
I would have thought that Qantas has an obligation FIRST AND FOREMOST to the traveling public, to provide a safe means of getting from A-B.
This is the BIGGEST problem with Qantas. Obligations to investors. Management are forgetting that they also have an obligation to provide safety for those traveling on its planes.
Cut, cut, cut. Where does it end? How much cutting can an airline perform before safety is compromised?
It seems to be getting to this stage now. Sending aircraft to cheap facilities in asia who do a nice spit and polish job, (just dont look behind the panels), employing poorly/inappropriately trained staff in a facility that uses dodgey scaffolding around the aircraft in heavy maintenance, (yes, that's right. Shut down Sydney and transfer to a second rate facility that cannot handle the work.... let's see them claim in a year or so that they cannot support 747 maintenance in Australia, and are forced to send it overseas). Questionable LAME:AME ratios in some facilities, online maintenance manuals that print to paper incomplete instructions...
These are just a few examples in engineering. What about amongst cabin crew? I am sure that there are exaples of cost cutting that could have the potential errode safety standards. Pilots? is the company trying to impliment cost cutting exercises that have the potential to errode safety standards?
The primary obligation of an airline is the safety of its passengers, not to making money for it's shareholders.
It's about time Dicko and his gophers thought about that.