Sadly the sequence of events in the past couple of weeks has highlighted what many have been saying for a long time.
The treatment and neglect of the 'premium airline' is coming back to bite the board and ceo at a time the airline needs people at the top who truly believe in Qantas. Unfortunately this is all missing.
Alan Joyce should be at the forefront explaining to shareholders, and more importantly, the australian public, what he and the board will do to recover a situation that is totally unacceptable.
If this is what a great two brand strategy delivers, well... you can keep the stategy thanks. The Australian travelling public don't give a rats about Jetstar and what it represents but they are deeply concerned (finally) at what years of neglect, inept management and deciscions based on corporate greed have produced.
Unfortunately the sequence of events over the last few weeks has also highlighted that the senior management have no solution to the train wreck that they have created. They now have no answers. The corporate spin doctors of Epstein and Wirth have nothing but spin in all of their answers. Wirths' responses to some of the questions yesterday were appalling. A clear indication of the lack of knowledge as to the berevity of the situation of what smoke in the cockpit could actually really mean. So as a response to this, she feeds the waiting media the names of operating crew, in the hope they are led away from the scent of a greater problem.
I'm sure there are many 'crisis meetings' taking place but sadly no one from the board down will take ownership of the problem, acknowledge there is a major problem and implement steps to guide qantas to where all concerned staff, passengers and public think qantas should be.
Questions about the real impact of offshoring of maintenance function, the impact of offshoring of pilot positions, cabin crew postitons and the true value and impact to the "group".
In the interim I'm glad this week, Bruce Buchanan continues to espouse the virtues of cheap foreign labour. He and his cohorts within senior qantas group management continually demonstate and epitomise all that is wrong with Qantas as a group.