This was forwarded to me - it is fiction, but wouldn't it be nice! This could make AJ a hero.
Over the last six months we have conducted a thorough review of the Qantas longhaul business. This review has led us to the conclusion that Qantas’ greatest strengths, and what separates us from other airlines around the globe, is our proud Australian heritage, and our history of operational excellence. Today we reaffirm our commitment to these two points, and I will outline our plans to return Qantas to being not only a great airline, but a great business.
Over the past two months we have involved our all of our stakeholders, our investors, our customers, and most importantly, our staff. We have briefed our major investors, who have responded positively to our plans, and have agreed to fund our fleet renewal and expansion. We have had frank and open discussions with the unions representing our 35,000 staff, and they have all agreed to come on board and support our strategy, by offering significant efficiencies. In return we have given them written guarantees that they will be included in our future. We have surveyed all of our frequent flyers, to understand what is important to them when they choose to fly Qantas.
In this increasingly globalized world, only the strong will survive, and for us to be strong we need a global network. In addition to our current fleet plan, we have ordered 20 Boeing 777s. Ten of these are the 777-200 LR, allowing us to fly from Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne direct to destinations in North America, such as Dallas, Chicago, Vancouver, San Francisco, in addition to Los Angles and across the states to New York.
The other ten aircraft are the Boeing 777-300ER, which will be deployed on routes throughout Asia and onward to Europe. Together with our A330 fleet, and the 787 when it arrives, we plan to operate daily flights direct from Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne to 14 cities in Asia, including three in mainland China. From five of these Asian cities there will be onward flights to five destinations in Europe. We have not forgotten the other Australian capital cities either, so there will be additional flights from Perth and Adelaide into Asia, with connections to all of our European destinations, and we are looking at running some international services out of Canberra as well.
We have formed an alliance with Qatar Airways, the 2011 Skytrax airline of the year. This will see us operating Qantas aircraft between Sydney and Doha, offering our customers codeshare connections from there to a multitude of other destinations across Europe and Africa. It will also give passengers arriving in Australia access to our domestic network.
When it arrives, the 787 is set to be a great aircraft. It will be delivered to Qantas, and will bolster our expanding international network, as well as renew our domestic widebody fleet. Jetstar will return to what it does best. It will return to its low cost roots, fly one aircraft type, the Airbus A320 to leisure destinations only, and be used to protect Qantas’ bottom line. It can no longer be allowed to cannibalize our higher yielding premium business. It will continue to grow as a franchise across Asia, but from here on must fund its own sustainable expansion.
As I mentioned earlier, one of our greatest strengths is being Australian, and what makes us Australian is not the Kangaroo painted on the tail, but our highly skilled Australian staff. We commit to Australian’s both crewing, and maintaining Qantas aircraft. We already have our centre of service excellence, and we are going to turn our engineering facilities, and pilot training facilities into Qantas centers of excellence as well. This will not only give us the best operational support in the world, but we will be able to offer these facilities to other airlines, thereby contributing to our bottom line.
We have negotiated support from the Australian government, who acknowledge the value of a strong national flag carrier to the Australian economy, and they have offered us support in the form of tax concessions. Specifically they have changed the way we can depreciate our aircraft, making us more competitive with foreign airlines.
We have set ourselves two ambitious targets; to be voted the world’s best airline, by Skytrax, and to obtain 45% market share of all international traffic into, and out of Australia. Indeed, the entire executive management have deferred the acceptance of any bonus payments, until these two targets have been achieved.
We hope you will join us in making Qantas a great business, and a great part of Australia’s future.