From the Herald-Sun, Melbourne tonight
In his lunchtime address to the Australia-Israel Chamber of Commerce Association, Mr Joyce canvassed many issues and announced that Qantas would resume flights to Europe last night.He said the five days of cancelled services had left about 15,000 Qantas passengers stranded and that 2000 people had been placed in hotels and given meals and access to telephone services at the airline's expense.
Revealing that accommodation costs had run to about $700,000, he said rival carriers would not have offered the same service and most likely would have left people to sleep in airports or find and pay for accommodation.
He said Qantas underwrote the accommodation costs not covered by insurance.
Once again QF has done better than the right thing for some of its customers but one can only speculate if Jetstar would have done the same thing in similar circumstances - sometimes good old Charlie Q can and does surprise and delight.
Alan has set Bruce a difficult and costly precedent should the parasites aka Jetstar venture to Europe.