CPIOM:
once the customer leaves they don't come back. Less flights, less need for employees. I am not saying this will happen what I am saying is the way a minority are acting on this thread to destroy their employer, and in fact their income, whether it is good or bad, is incomprehensable.(sic)
Rubbish CPIOM. Qantas has a virtual monopoly of capacity and facilities in Australia, and no matter how badly it is managed
people have no choice but to fly Qantas.
As for "destroying your employer" Management are doing a pretty good job of that themselves.
Furthermore, an airline that can only be kept profitable by endlessly making its staff cheaper through not compensating them for inflation - is consuming the very resource that generates it's revenue. That's not very smart, and it's not sustainable at all.
To put it another way, if an airline's ticket price reflects inflationary pressures (which they do), and the price of all other resources it consumes reflect inflationary pressures (like fuel), then why the hell shouldn't wages paid reflect inflationary pressures?
Of course Qantas was facing severe and sustained competition both domestically and Internationally (which it isn't), then Management could legitimately ask all staff (including themselves) to take a pay cut, restructure, whatever, but to reach that point, shareholder dividends would have to be zero, not 1.5 billion.
On a different note, I understand the QF Board is going to meet in New York. My guess is that they are not going to like the funding options proposed, and in any case, they are out of their league playing games in that city. Best chance for funding the Dreamliner would be doing a Rupert Murdoch and getting the U.S. Exim (import/export) bank to fund it at concessional rates. Maybe the Europeans will do the same thing for them.
Either that....or they are going to come back and try for another end run around the Qantas Sale Act.