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Wirraway
30th Dec 2004, 09:45
crikey.com.au

Doing it tough at Qantas
Pemberton Strong
Aviation correspondent

Qantas has caught Crikey's attention for a variety of reasons over the last couple of weeks - here's a package of our recent coverage from subscriber emails:

30 December 2004

Spare a thought for the fifty or so super high flyers with Qantas as they struggle to decide which of the two $500-plus bottles of wine, delivered personally by senior Qantas executives this week, to drink first over the silly season.

And isn't it good to know Qantas chair Margaret Jackson is using her cross-directorships to good effect. The $50,000 worth of fabulous plonk handed out around the executive suites were none other than Penfolds, the flagship brand of Southcorp, where Jacko became deputy chairman on fleeing the Fairfax board earlier this year.

Memo to the ATO: Make sure Qantas pays the FBT on these gifts and check if the big 50 declare them in their returns.

It would be interesting to know if Southcorp threw them in as a bonus to Qantas executives or if the Qantas board decided to dip into existing stocks that would normally be offered in first class.

$8000 for a short bed from Qantas

Meanwhile, a short subscriber writes:

Qantas Skybeds, introduced with such fanfare at such a huge cost, are for shorties only. I am 5 foot 7 inches and can just stretch out fully. I can't imagine that all those 6 foot or more people who have paid their $8000 plus for a bed must think about being short-changed.

I know Qantas is paranoid about this becoming public and have taken steps to try to control photo images of the beds, expressing great concern that anyone who is photographed in one is not too tall. Be interesting to compare the lengths of skybeds on Qantas, BA, Singapore Airlines and - now -Virgin.

James Packer's Qantas cross-promotion
December 23 subscriber email

It seems Margaret Jackson isn’t the only Qantas board member to do a little bit of cross-promoting when the opportunity arises.

The only brand of toiletries advertised in the ladies' bathroom in the Qantas Club is Jurlique. The very same Jurlique that the Packer family recently extracted out of Challenger in exchange for surrendering its management rights.

James Packer, of course, joined the Qantas board earlier this year in a bizarre move that baffled many observers.

The Packer family's close links with the AWU and people like Bill Shorten was thought to be useful for Qantas's ongoing industrial battles but apart from that, some critics put the move down to more social climbing by Qantas chair Margaret Jackson.

The Fairfax board was certainly not amused to first discover that Jacko was considering an invitation to join the News Corp board earlier this year and then later learnt that she'd been courting James Packer to join her at Qantas whilst sitting inside the tent at Fairfax.

No wonder Fairfax chairman Dean Wills put out a terse statement when she jumped to become deputy chairman of Southcorp, the wine provider of choice at Qantas.

The truth on Qantas and FBT
December 29 subscriber email

Steve the Tax Specialist writes:

Regarding your suggestion of FBT being payable on the free wine provided to super-high flyers at Qantas - sorry to spoil a good stir with the facts, but its unlikely FBT would be payable for the following reasons:

There is probably not an 'arrangement' between Qantas the employers of those individuals (the absence of an arrangement will mean FBT is not payable), and;
As non-employees of Qantas, they could treat the benefits as non-deductible meal entertainment which does not incur FBT, and3. They'll probably write it off in their accounts as 'promotional' costs anyway.
Steve (Tax specialist)

Meanwhile, a Qantas staffer moans:

Nice to know the the boys and girls at the top are giving themselves chrissy presents/rewards this year, for all their hard work. The general staff have had to pay for their own Christmas parties. Sad state of affairs really, especially when Southcorp could have supplied the drinks at least.

They just get more out of touch.

===========================================

Ultralights
30th Dec 2004, 10:13
whats the phrase im after....................................................... ........ thats it, Conflict of Interest!! isnt that a sackable offence? should she be forced by law, to give up her seat on one of the boards??

VH-Cheer Up
1st Jan 2005, 23:06
What's the problem with Jurlique products for the ladies room anyway?

Mrs Cheer-Up and the Cheerettes tel me it's really good quality stuff, Australian-owned and manufactured (Adelaide Hills, they think) and it's all very "natural", not-tested-on-animals stuff.

Or would Crikey & Co rather we sent QF's spending offshore to Revlon or some other non-Oz LD50 testing multi-national?

Me, I prefer the smell of JetA1. At least gives you some hope of getting somewhere.

VHCU

Pinky the pilot
2nd Jan 2005, 04:52
And I don't give a rat's **** what any of the so-called Wine experts/writers/whatever say, but any bottle of wine that costs more that $25 is overpriced!!:*
Capt Claret et al; over to you!

You only live twice. Once when
you're born. Once when
you've looked death in the face.

wirgin blew
4th Jan 2005, 05:36
I heard the staff at QF got a first aid kit for Christmas. Nice to know how much your bosses love you.



:ouch:

Ultralights
4th Jan 2005, 06:31
first aid kit? all i ever got was a cap, pen, Mug, another cap, and a t-shirt!

yeah, nice christmas bonuses!

Capt Claret
4th Jan 2005, 08:10
Pinky,

IMHO the best bottle of wine is a cheap one that tastes good! :}

schnauzer
4th Jan 2005, 08:22
There was no first aid kit. Or pen. Or mug T shirt or anything else. :{ Sob:{

All we managed was the usual Flight Ops diary and a bunch of amendments.

Bottle 'o grange woulda been good tho'.

to no avail
6th Jan 2005, 09:55
We the little people got a happy 'get back to work and fix that plane' but they did put on dinner for us. A snag and salad job. A bottle of plonk would have been better.

Wirraway
7th Jan 2005, 03:50
crikey.com.au

Holiday shift at Qantas
Pemberton Strong
07 January 2005

The boss might be on holiday, but the work of replying to QANTAS's critics must go on.

How to ruin a holiday break. It has fallen to Qantas Executive General Manager, John Borghetti to be the airline's designated letter writer in reply to letters in The Australian Financial Review.

That's a big change and the usual DLW, CEO Geoff Dixon, must be out of the country or on leave for Mr Borghetti to have to step up and fire two missives to the AFR letter pages this week in reply to what must be annoying letters from Qantas watchers or users.

CEO Geoff is the usual writer. Who can forget his blast at the attitude of the inhabitants of Hamilton Island in late November who dared criticise the Jetstar service in and out of the resort, and the sorts of passengers delivered to the Whitsunday playground by the Qantas subsidiary.

A classic, along with his letter several months earlier kicking off the un-level and unfair playing field argument with big naughty government-supported foreign airlines competing unfairly with Aussie battler Qantas.

Both classics in the usual 'in your face' or 'junkyard dog' style practised at times by the Qantas CEO.

Either he's on holidays or having a bex and a good lie down somewhere where the AFR is not delivered.

So two letters from the management hanger at Qantas HQ at Mascot from Mr Borghetti.

One was replying to a writer to the AFR from a week ago having a nice go at Qantas' belief in competition and criticising poor service and then one Thursday replying to comments made in another letter about issues raised by Rex abandoning the Sydney-Canberra route.

Of the two, Thursday's letter is a better effort from John, or whoever scripted the letter for him to sign.

The original letter raised the usual issues about Qantas' monopoly on the route with Rex and Virgin Blue disappearing from the service, wondered about Qantas's so called "best fare of the day" idea. The Borghetti letter provided the standard responses, but finished nicely by pointing that while "much had been made of the fact that Qantas will be the sole operator between Sydney and Canberra, Rex is the sole operator on about half of its 31 routes."

I know two wrongs do not make a right or somesuch, but it was a nice point to those critics worried about the Qantas monopoly that if they worried about monopoly generally, then Rex should also be taken to task.

The first letter on Tuesday though was a bit tougher to handle as it was another in the steady dribble of letters from AFR readers complaining about the level of service they have experienced flying Qantas and the attitudes shown to them by Qantas staff or the airline generally.

When layered on top of complaints about Qantas' attitude to competition, Borghetti could only trot out the usual platitudes that Australia had a very 'liberal' aviation market compared to the rest of the world.

And despite those complaints about poor service Qantas continued to win awards for its customer service. Standard arguments, but given the tone of the comments in the letter, I fear they fell on deaf ears.

But there was a third letter (on Wednesday)from a Qantas customer who repeated what many travelers have been saying in the past couple of years. "At every point of measure I can feel Qantas is cost cutting," the letter in Wednesday's AFR said.

Starting with "Each time I travel with Qantas I wrestle with a letter of complaint only to despair, what's the use?" there was an element of despair about the national carrier.

A good way to start a letter because from correspondence to the AFR and Crikey over the past few months, that's exactly how many Qantas travellers are feeling.

There are not many cheerleaders out there for the Mangled Roo.

It is a pity the letters at the AFR cannot be accessed other than by joining the paper's declining premium site(like Qantas in fact). They are worth reading, especially the one from Tony Forrest of St Leonards in Sydney, in Wednesday's paper.

So the question now is, will Mr Borgehetti write for the third time in a week to answer Mr Forrest's very heartfelt letter of complaint, or will this one be allowed to slide through to the keeper in the hope that no one else reads it?

A friend of this writer has had an ongoing battle to find out how you join the really sharp end of the Qantas gravy train. No, not the board, but the Captain's club, where chair people and VIPs end up.

So far one letter, received in the past week to a letter sent to Qantas last August.

A reply has been sent back, with copies to Geoff Dixon and others inside the airline wondering why Qantas is so arbitrary and whether the fact that the person concerned is CEO of a major Non-Government Organisation and whether that has any thing to do with their exclusion from the Captain's Club.

So far Geoff Dixon nor John Borghetti have not replied. Strange that, writing to newspapers about customer complaints, but not replying to customers who write directly with queries and complaints.

==========================================

argusmoon
7th Jan 2005, 09:52
You should work in the place....If in a an open staff forum you dare to voice despair about any shortcomings you are taken aside amd subtly threatened about your negative attitude.Get Dixon on an aircraft and he misses out on his meal choice or the IFE is on the fritz then he expresses concern that he is being lied to by the minions about how everything is Ok.He is pretty much a seat warmer whose days (employment)are drawing to a close and only really interested in his bonuses and new found fatherhood

Uncommon Sense
7th Jan 2005, 13:27
I couldn't really care less about the idiot 'yes men' managers and the greedy executives at QANTAS.

What I despair at is the future of the genuinely good people at the coalface, trying to get the message UP to those making the stupid decisions. What is left of their goodwill is rapidly turning to cynicism and the failure of QANTAS appears inevitable through no fault of the foot soldiers, many of who can recall a great airline and cameraderie.

That 'Spirit' of Australia is almost dead - the Greed of a few has taken over, and all that may be left soon is a carcass for the other birds of prey to come and pick over.

Such a pity for a carrier whose impeccably long history has been ignored and discarded, it's value discounted, it's potential thwarted.

As the 'McAirlines' invetiably fall out of favour with those who want a bit more out of a service provider in the future, QANTASTAR won't be in a position to respond.

DEFCON4
7th Jan 2005, 17:18
A short term denigration of the brand for some longer term gain?
What are they going to do with all the aircraft on order?