Too Close to the Truth
Sandilands' is uncomfortably close to the truth.
"It seems fair to say that labor and management are adrift in the Qantas disputes, and that the customers, most of whom could be expected to be unmoved by such issues, could also drift away from the airline.
These are some of the issues that affect customers.
The London Olympics: Qantas has transferred half of its daily slots to London Heathrow to connections, really poor connections, with British Airways flights at Bangkok or Hong Kong from early next year.
Putting customers loyal to the Australian quality of the Qantas product onto a British Airways flight is insulting. It is an inferior product according to many travellers, it involves mid trip delays, and for an airline that seeks to leverage its Spirit of Australian branding, this is treachery.
Of course you don’t have to put up with this. What Qantas has done is openly invite its loyal customers to fly all the way to the games on a quality competitor, if they cannot secure seats on the two Airbus A380s Qantas will be flying daily to London via Singapore (one flight originating from Melbourne and the other from Sydney.)
The Red Q Asian mystery: Qantas linked the London reductions, which cut both jobs and its aged 747 fleet, to freeing up the money to invest in a brand new Asia based premium quality flying single aisle Airbus A320s.
The weird stuff: Qantas group CEO Alan Joyce is on the public record as saying this carrier will have full length sleeper seats in first class, and open up new connections between Asia and Europe as well as Australia, yet the A320 isn’t set up to cater for competitive luxury travel and can only fly with a full payload for around 5 hours 30 minutes, which won’t get it from Asia to southern Australia other than Perth and won’t get it from SE Asia non-stop to anywhere in eastern Europe.
Was Joyce really alluding to what this airline might do with some of the Boeing 787s the group has on order?
The business structure of the new luxury Asia based carrier is that it will be a China, Singapore, Malaysia or ‘other’ national flag carrier, meaning 51% owned by the nationals of the chosen state, and that it will take business off existing marquee brands, like Singapore Airlines, Malaysia Airlines and Cathay Pacific. Good luck!
However the business plan implies that Qantas sees no risk that China, Singapore or Malaysia might expect reciprocity of opportunity to set up similarly structured business units in Australia, thus positioning themselves for the technological future when viable airliner designs become available for non-stop flights between Australian cities and London, Paris and Frankfurt.
This could be a lethal assumption on the part of Qantas.
At the moment we see no signs of progress on the Qantas/Asia venture.
Off-shore labor: Qantas subsidiary Jetstar is already rotating poorly paid and apparently inadequately trained flight attendants through its domestic network, where they can work on ‘tag’ flight rosters that begin and end in Asia, but operate domestic sectors in the middle.
Jetstar says the flight attendants are trained to the standards of the countries of residence. Wake up Jetstar, this is Australia, our country, our standards.
Similar issues arise in the basing of Australian registered A330-200s in Singapore to operated Singapore-Melbourne-Singapore flights using pilots and cabin crew resident in Singapore and paid according to Singapore labor arrangements.
There is a dilemma or two for all parties in these arrangements. There is nothing inherently inferior at all in the standards of quality Asian carriers, many of which employ Australian pilots. The issue is not one of Qantas trying to replicate Singapore Airlines, which would quite possibly be received with enthusiasm by many travellers who have crossed over to that airline. It is a question about obliterating the Qantas investment in Australian based excellence for a lower cost, and much lower quality Jetstar product as an alternative to actually competing with overseas competitors.
Qantas has chosen to avoid the competitive task on routes to Asia and beyond to Europe with modern efficient wide-bodied jets, and done nothing but whinge about losing market share when it fact is hasn’t offered to fly the new growth routes so ably addressed by Emirates, Cathay Pacific and Singapore Airlines among others.
Qantas hasn’t had market stolen from it, rather than having given it up and away.
Jetstar type low cost franchises do make a lot of sense as an investment, yet they are not an alternative to keeping or winning the full service market in either Australia or on its longer haul markets. They create new demand, and grow aviation jobs. But they are no reason to abandon quality, especially where the opportunity resides in reputation and service delivery, rather than in the fare price."
Is time for an another inquiry.