Jetstar Stingy and Racist?

[Fonz121]

Just came back from a trip to asia on Jetstar and I didn't realise that all (well most) cabin crew were based offshore. Maybe I've had my head in the sand, but is this the case for all Jetstar International flights? Majority of cabin crew are not Australian? Not that I personally care about who serves (or sells in this case) me on a flight. They could be an eskimo for all i care as long as they are nice and friendly. Just sh1ts me to see Jetstar hand jobs overseas to save a few more bucks.

One other thing I noticed, and this could just have been co incidence but there seemed to be be two white hosties on each flight and i never saw them anywhere in economy, which leaves Starclass. DO Jetstar not think that Asian hosties are good enough for the higher paying passenger?

Absolute sh ite flight btw. Didn't get reserved seats on way back. Budget doesn't work very well longhaul.

[Scumfish]

Unfortunately in some cases, the Australian worker is pricing themselves out of a job thus the lower paid foreign worker. This also equates to the company being able to expand at a far greater rate and allow cheaper fairs. This in turn will stimulate the economy creating more jobs back home for Australians. You see, it's not all that bad.

[lowerlobe]

Here we go again...Scumfish..I mean Sunfish..I mean Gilligan..

Your quote "the Australian worker is pricing themselves out of a job thus the lower paid foreign worker"

Your argument has as many holes as a colander.So Australian workers are pricing themselves out of jobs!

What about the boards and their never ending greed with bounus's and the fact that they get more money than their counterparts in other airlines with bigger fleets.

How about we outsource our board from overseas and see how much moeny we save.

Also your quote "this also equates to the company being able to expand at a far greater rate and allow cheaper fairs. This in turn will stimulate the economy creating more jobs back home for Australians. You see, it's not all that bad"

What a load of rubbish.It's been proven that the fares on Jetscar int are not that cheap compared to other full service airlines to the same destinations.

This is not about the pax or the economy it's about corporate greed and as far as creating more jobs....read overseas jobs and those in Australia are casual and on lousy T & C's...

QF is making more money than they ever have and with J* only putting in roughly 2 or 3 % of total group profit.This is not about a low cost carrier this is about low pay carrier to destroy Australian jobs and prospects..

It's not bad all right ....IF YOU ARE UPPER MANAGEMENT OR A BOARD MEMBER

[Scumfish]

I agree with you entirely about the renumeration that executives are receiving. It's disgraceful. In regards to the prices charged for tickets, granted that it is only a handful that are sold very cheaply but the reasoning behind all of this is that the average punter thinks that because they are travelling on a low cost carrier, the fare must be cheaper, even though it may well be more expensive. They THINK they are getting a better deal. This subsequently contributes to a companies higher profit.
Unfortunately reality dictates that Australian workers are becoming increasingly more expensive. This is because of third world countries such as China that already had the lower conditions already established becoming major economic powerhouses. When an Australian is paid, say five times more than his Chinese counterpart, what hope do you have of competing? I personally feel that Australian government policy has a lot to do with the lack of competitivness. Both corporate and personal tax rates are way too high and the government is far too generous in the fair trade agreements that it negotiates with other countries.

[lowerlobe]

" They THINK they are getting a better deal. This subsequently contributes to a companies higher profit"

Thats great in theory, however J* only contributes about 2 or 3 % to group profit.If J* was away and ahead of mainline in terms of profit you and others would have a great argument.It is the exact opposite though and in the case of J* Asia a bottomless pit which devours turnover.In fact if J*Asia did not exist group profit would have been much larger.

J* exists only as a tool to destroy unions and lower pay and conditions for Australian workers.It also has the negative side effect of lowering employment in Australia because they are hiring less in Australia and more overseas.This is something you would think the government would be watching but apparently not.

I have no argument at all in terms of a healthy profit however if you look at the overall way the airline is run I'm very disappointed.

Imagine how good an airline we would be if the management worked WITH the employees in stead of being almost constantly in conflict with them.

[27/09]

Unfortunately in some cases, the Australian worker is pricing themselves out of a job thus the lower paid foreign worker. This also equates to the company being able to expand at a far greater rate and allow cheaper fairs. This in turn will stimulate the economy creating more jobs back home for Australians. You see, it's not all that bad.

"You see, it's not all that bad."

Scumfish, I like your irony. :D I think some have missed your point if I understand you correctly. This free market thing is a crock of ****.

Perhaps it might be more acceptable if the CEO's and Pollies were also paid along the same lines.

[speedbirdhouse]

I had to laugh at your post justapplhere.

That you seem to have problems with LL assertion suggests that you are QF senior management or have NO understanding of aviation issues in this country......

[request deferred]

Basically think of Jetstar Intl as an Asian airline based in Australia trading on the Qantas brandname ( "A Qantas Group Airline " ). They are crewed by one or two experienced flight attendants, usually ex Ansett/Australian Airlines with the rest being cheaper based Asian crew.
I estimate that the Asian cabin crew would be at least $30K per annum cheaper than an equivalent QF mainline cabin crew.

[lowerlobe]

justapplhere....If you look at the total group profit and then look at the J* profit you will see that J* only contributed about 2 or 3 %.Pure and simple maths thats all it takes...

Now if you start up another division in any business and it is only making that sort of percentage of total profit would you keep it going?

If after all the work that needs to be done to run that division you would want a much better return...that is unless it had another purpose than just returning a direct profit....think about that last part.

AO was the first part of the plan but it did not achieve what Darth wanted so he invented AO version II and called it J* as AO could not achieve the cost base he wanted and was only marginally profitable

The bottom line is that if J* is not adding that much to total group profit why is it there?

I'm sure that if Darth spent the money used to start J* and had used it to improve mainline the return on investment would have been larger.

[flyingins]

lowerlobe,
If only it were that simple! Jetstar's most significant impact upon the Qantas Group isn't it's paper profit which, you correctly assert, is only a small percentage of Qantas's overall amount. It is the fact that without Jetstar, Virgin Blue would have quite effortlessley breached Geoff Dixon's famous "line-in-the-sand" domestic market share of no less than 65%.

This would have allowed DJ to expand at a much faster rate than it has over the last 3 years and, arguably, would have seen the Virgin entity reach a critical-mass and compete far more aggressively with QF Domestic.

Jetstar has made Qantas money, then, in 3 ways;
1) Outright profit.
2) Protection of QF Domestic's profit (ie - preventing a fares war between a carrier with a higher-cost base (QF)and a carrier with a lower-cost base (DJ). In simple terms, both carriers would have hurt, but Qantas would have hurt more).
3) Stimulating and capturing a new market, so that now a whole new type of passenger flies when before they did not. This has certainly lowered the so-called "class" of traveller, but these people still pay money. Money which Virgin isn't getting as much of, but the Qantas Group now is.

As for using Jetstar as a tool to undermine the terms and conditions of Qantas staff, I can't deny that that is probably true. However, imagine the pressure Qantas staff would now be feeling if Virgin had pushed to, say, 45% of the domestic market and there was no Jetstar in the middle? You'd still have to compete, but Qantas would not be deriving ANY financial benefit from the low-cost market. Bye-bye profit, hello wage-cuts and redundancies!

Like everything in life, there are always two sides to a story.

['holic]

....... and sometimes even three sides.

4) minus the profit that would have been made from pax who would have travelled Qantas at a higher yield moving to a lower yield Jetstar

5) minus those parts of Jetstar infrastructure (maintenance, training, recruiting etc) which have come out of Qantas's budget.

6) minus the impact of bad publicity.

7) minus the cost of goodwill and morale of Qantas emplyees

8) minus the cost of Virgin, as a result of Jetstar being established, moving into and gaining market share with high yielding business pax.

I could go on. Anyone have a fourth side .......

[Gnadenburg]

I had Thai cabin crew on a flight with J* to Honolulu. The Cabin manager was Australian, and in conversation, mentioned Thai cabin crew are on a base wage of $6000AUD a year.

Cheap labour eh.

[jack red]

This has certainly lowered the so-called "class" of traveller, but these people .................................
flyingins.....you toffey nosed snob you.........!!!!!!:=

[Buster Hyman]

More jobs eh?

Perhaps...but what are those jobs paying? What good is a low paying job when the CPI, GST, fuel prices etc continues on its way & earnings fall behind costs? What good is making goods & services cheaper off shore when there's no body onshore who can afford them?

The bottom line is that we are creating a class system of haves & have nots. This country doesn't need to be like the USA & indeed, the UK with class systems but, that is where we are rapidly heading.

:(

[lowerlobe]

Well said Buster ...even for a melbournian...he ..he...lol

But Buster is right though ,why do we have to model ourselves on other countries that have more problems than you can poke a stick at.

Why can't we be Australian and not some clone of the US or elsewhere.Darth and his mob are trurning us against each other whilst at the same time they are looking after each other very well.I'm not sure about tech crew but there are more dobbers in cabin crew than there are penguins at Phillip Island.

The next thing you know George W Howard will want to set his own version of Guantanamo bay (hope that spelling was ok)

I say Sam Kekovich for PM...Buster isn't he from Victoria...damn

[J430]

You know it makes sense, I'm Prime Minister Kekovich....:D

And puts some lamb chops on the BBQ, its the Australian thing to do!

[Buster Hyman]

He does have that "see through bull ****" ability that we Victorians have at birth...maybe he is a Victorian.


As for the Lamb ads...It's always worth another look (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZtWVJikNnx4)!

[rodney rude]

Sorry - back to the thread.

As a HK based pilot, I spend obviously lots of time at the airport and see many many many foreign airline crews every day, and on my leisure time I travel lots around Asia. Like it or not, QF and J* are just like EVERY other major airline reference foreign crew.

Every carrier alights a crew with 2 or 3 homebred crew and the rest are nearly all Asians. For instance, flew with Northwest to Narita and then Honolulu - 2 or 3 locals, the rest Philipinos. This is not a new concept, nor is iot confined to Aus airlines. Check out the crew getting off Virgin Atlantic in Sydney tomorrow.

Qantas's hypocrisy is the crap written on the side of the Hardware - "Spirit of Australia". Spirit of Saddam more like it.

[BHMvictim]

DO Jetstar not think that Asian hosties are good enough for the higher paying passenger?

I would expect nothing less that two cute asian hosties if I were in Business class. At least they would be more polite and pleasant to deal with than a pair of stuck up superficial anglo hosties!

[Fonz121]

Hey BHM,
Couldn't agree more,but like i said, this has nothing to do with race. Just sad that an Aus company can't look out for its own citizens first. but then i guess it does through shareholders. How about we start a not for profit airline. No shareholders! Any profits go straight back into the airline and ALL of its staff. If Qantas did this every member of staff would be worth a mint! Would motivate the staff to perform well too. There would be management as ultimately someone has to have final say on decisions but they would be voted for by fellow staff so if they tried to screw anyone over they would be out. Now all i need is a lot of scratch.

[Elroy Jettson]

I am wondering about the legalities of it... Why cant i start up a building company, hire only thais, pay them nothing, and compete with other Australian building companies? Thought it would be illegal for me to do that??? :confused:

[lowerlobe]

Elroy,
With George W Howard it would probably be OK but with the public you'd be a shot duck.

With J* they are doing it surreptitiously because it is out of sight of the general public and therefore G W Howard doesn't have to answer questions.

It's also because the journo's don't want to lose any free overseas trips.

If you imported cheap overseas labour and housed them near your work site the press would give you hell because the general public would be walking past it every day.

Then again if there were any renovations or houses to fall off the back of the truck maybe not..............

[Elroy Jettson]

Ok, so lets say Myer or David Jones decided that they would recruit all their floor staff from Bangladesh, and pay them local equivalent wages of a stall holder in a Dhakar market, and their excuse was that they buy their garments from Bangladesh, so that is why they hire from there... How long do you think it would be before there was a picket line out the front of the stores?

Before anyone starts about Jeffstar flying to these countries so he should be able to recruit from them, what percentage of Phuket passengers are outbound tourists, and what percentage of the seats sold are Thai locals coming to holiday in Sydney? Shouldnt that percentage be the legal crewing percentage for cabin crew?

If it is legal, what is stopping them hiring tech crew from other countries? Just the Aussie ATPL requirement on the AOC I think. 89 showed us how easy that rule is to bypass if you know the right politicians. One thing the Qantas group does well is grease the right palms in Canberra.

[jack red]

89 showed us how easy that rule is to bypass if you know the right politicians.

Absolutely correct Leroy..........no problems at all!:E

[ratpoison]

Thai cabin crew are on a base wage of $6000AUD a year.
Correct Gnad, and to add insult to injury they have to pay $1500 (which is a ****e load of money to them) as a downpayment before commencing their training. This is non refundable if they decide to leave which many want to due to the abuse of conditions. Unfortunately the turds in management work these people 10 days straight, two off and then another 11 to 12 days. Overnight in the Stamford at Syd then requires them to SHARE rooms. There may be 8 rock up at the hotel but Jet* have only booked 4 or 5 rooms. Penny pinching bas*ards. This is only the tip of the iceburg of what is actually going on. No doubt going to have more probs soon as I hear that 3 more of the EK boys that went over are resigning next month. That's 4 in 5 months. Must be a top outfit to work for. !!!:cool:

[domo]

hear that 3 more of the EK boys that went over are resigning next month. That's 4 in 5 months. Must be a top outfit to work for. !!!

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wow worst than the sandpit a new low tide mark, must be pissed i mean happy to be home but so pissed off that they will go overseas rather than work for jetstar

[Fonz121]

Yeah i don't think I saw any Thais on my flight. apart from the hosties i mean.

[Taildragger67]

Just a thought, but the reason they're able to have non-Aussies crewing might be to do with transport industries in general? F'rinstance, many merchant ships are owned and registered in 'developed' countries but are crewed by people from 'less-developed' nations.

Except where the relevant transport unions of the flag country kick up a stink about it...

Incomiiiiiiing!!

[Wirraway]

Well my wife and I have just returned from S.E. Asia, flying 2 sectors with J*
CNS-DRW-SIN return and to be honest could not fault the service, this route is operated by J*Asia crew, and would kill the service given by QF on our last BNE-MNL return, granted it has a QF code share and no charge for F&B.

Also for the 1st time on this trip did 4 sectors with Tiger and the crew on these flights were very good indeed, seeing that Tiger are about to enter the Aus domestic market, I can only imagine J* and Virgin management losing a bit of sleep.

There will be massive turmoil in Australian aviation over the next few years, starting today with the approval of the QF sale.