Qantas dispute a wake-up call to Canberra
We wonder whether anyone in Australia has connected these dots.
The seeds of Qantas's challenges were sown more than 15 years ago, when Australia's government granted virtually unrestricted air access rights to foreign state-owned carriers such as Emirates.
Emirates is now the largest international airline in the world, ostensibly serving a country slightly larger than Tasmania with a population the size of the greater Sydney area. This airline has grown disproportionately, not by serving its own minuscule market, but by dumping capacity into markets like Australia, pulling passengers destined for other international locations through its state-built super-hub.
The Arabian Gulf states operate their airlines as instruments of economic development policy. Their vertically integrated business models include everyone from the head of state to the janitorial staff, including regulators, navigation, airports and support services.
These predatory airlines have dumped so much capacity into the Australian market that your national airline now finds itself in distress. No airline in the developed world could endure such an attack, unless its government is prepared to similarly subsidise its operations and forgive all forms of taxation.
What Australians are witnessing is the result of unsustainable public policy.
While Qantas employees and management battle for the hearts and minds of the public, it was their own government that abandoned to these predators the thousands of Australians who benefit from employment in your aviation industry and many more at its suppliers.
If there is a silver lining for us, it is that we have been able to use Australia as a shining example of what not to do with international air policy. The government of Canada has adopted a far more principled and studied approach.
This is cold comfort for our colleagues at Qantas and the citizens of Australia. The Australian government needs a wake-up call.
Captain Paul Strachan president, Air Canada Pilots Association, Mississauga, Canada