Joyce ‘retires’ early 👍
I see in the Media that the " Hero Pilot " Richard Dec...........has given his expert opinion as well.
Is this the type of thing that QF management would do? Find out who it was and punish them?
Could be a short tenure if that's true and the ACCC decide to use their teeth.
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Mainline are planning for at least another 400 more pilots for growth beyond Sunrise and planned retirements. So they aren’t planning on stopping at only 20 321s and then outsourcing the rest of the work to subsidiaries if they are working on those numbers. The plan seems to be a rough 1 for 1 replacement 737/321.
Mainline are planning for at least another 400 more pilots for growth beyond Sunrise and planned retirements. So they aren’t planning on stopping at only 20 321s and then outsourcing the rest of the work to subsidiaries if they are working on those numbers. The plan seems to be a rough 1 for 1 replacement 737/321.
Now they are talking about an additional minimum 400 pilots over the what’s needed to crew the existing fleet, plus Sunrise and projected retirements. That’s the equivalent of an extra 40 short haul or 12 ultra long haul aircraft. So whatever the plan is I can hardly see them downsizing any part of the mainline operation.
Last edited by dr dre; 8th Sep 2023 at 15:45.
CAN WE STILL LOVE A WOKE, INSIDERS’ QANTAS?
Greg SheridanOnce, the nation loved Qantas with abandon. The little Aussie battler that started off in Cloncurry 100 years ago and grew up to be a national champion, the spirit of Australia, the flying kangaroo. Once, every Australian hoped that if they flew, it would be Qantas.
Now, as its long-time impresario, public face and emperor Alan Joyce quickly scuttles off into the sunset, Qantas is the nation’s most complained about company. Its service is mediocre, it’s wildly expensive and involved in a bewildering conflagration of controversies.
The decline of the Qantas good name encompasses several fairly tragic tales of modern Australia, a land of ineffective governance, modest and patchy performance, unjustified complacency, debilitating cultural confusion, and a growing divide between insiders and outsiders, between the Chairman’s Lounge and cattle class.
It’s hard to know who has handled controversy worse, Qantas or the Albanese government.
In July, Transport Minister Catherine King refused a request from Qatar Airways for 21 more flights a week to Australia’s main airports. That’s a million extra seats coming to Australia every year. The benefits in tourism alone would be hundreds of millions of dollars, plus the extra freight capacity and greater choice for Australian flyers.
Plus inevitably lower airfares. Jayne Hrdlicka, Virgin Australia chief executive, claims it could have lowered airfares by 40 per cent. King labels such estimates ridiculous.
The big beneficiary of the Qatar Airways decision is Qantas – no extra competition from a superior airline, no need to reduce punitive airfares.
Simultaneously, the Australian Competition & Consumer Commission has taken action against Qantas in the Federal Court. The ACCC says Qantas sold tickets for more than 8000 flights it had already cancelled. It wants a penalty in the hundreds of millions of dollars.
Qantas also had to backflip on its policy to extinguish by December 31 more than $500m worth of flight credits from the Covid period still held with Qantas and Jetstar by travellers in Australia and overseas. Qantas had made it quite hard to redeem credits. Not only were there, until very recently, the familiar epic telephone wait times but customers can’t use a credit even for a spouse or child.
Other airlines accuse Qantas of “slot hoarding”. Sydney airport has a limited number of landing slots. Qantas holds a huge number. Even now Qantas is not flying at its pre-Covid capacity but retains many slots it never uses. This prevents competition.
The Qatar Airways controversy has a way to run. Opposition transport spokeswoman Bridget McKenzie has succeeded in setting up a Senate select committee to investigate the decision.
In parliament this week the Albanese government looked all over the shop like a bad baby’s breakfast. It couldn’t answer simple questions, couldn’t sustain a coherent explanation for the decision. It looked rattled.
It’s worth taking a step or two back from the immediate controversy to consider what it reveals about our society and economy. Our economy is a mess. Our productivity is declining. Throughout the past year the amount of economic activity we produce per hour fell by 3.6 per cent. We are in a per capita recession. The economy is notionally growing because of high immigration, but per capita income has declined two quarters in a row. The government is busily re-regulating industrial relations so that flexibility and productivity will decline further.
But our powers of self-delusion remain formidable. Anthony Albanese said Australia had the world’s most competitive aviation market. That’s just wrong. In our domestic aviation market, more than 95 per cent of flights are undertaken by two airlines, Qantas and Virgin.
Tony Webber, former chief economist for Qantas, now chief executive of Airline Intelligence and Research, has conducted exhaustive analysis of Australia’s international aviation market and finds there are only eight routes Australia flies that are more competitive than our domestic market, with 20 routes even less competitive than our domestic market. Webber concludes we are “a far cry from the most competitive (aviation market) in the world”.
Meanwhile, Qantas, rightly in my view, cannot be sold to majority foreign ownership. Whatever that adds up to, it’s not a free market. I’m no apostle of free market absolutism. I think it’s good that we have a majority Australian-owned airline. Geoffrey Blainey, our most distinguished historian, tells Inquirer: “BHP and Qantas were both seen as nation-building organisations and enjoyed enormous support.”
But Qantas’s size and influence no longer are seen as particularly good for many Australians. There is the poor quality of service, the endless cancellations and delays, and the arrogant, prissy bossiness of Qantas, which tells its passengers what to think about every issue from gay marriage, to Israel Folau, to the proposed Indigenous voice to parliament.
Yet the Qantas bottom line looks great; a full year profit of $2.47bn just about matches the $2.7bn it got from the government during Covid.
Qantas is emblematic of the Australian economy. We are assuredly not a socialist economy, but neither are we a free market economy. We are really a fat and lazy oligopolist economy whose luck may be running out. We’re a cosy corporate state kind of dozy economy.
Of our 11 biggest companies, only two were founded in the past 100 years, Fortescue and Macquarie Bank. The rate of new business formation is very low. A few years ago a landmark Harvard Kennedy School of Government study found that while Australia was the eighth richest country, for economic complexity we ranked a pitiful 93rd. We are wealthy because we sell huge amounts of minerals. The rest is noise around our lavish, quarrelsome efforts to redistribute this wealth.
Qantas tells our story. Founded in 1920, it was a magnificent pioneer. It ran the first Flying Doctor Service, another icon. After World War II it was taken into government ownership and became part of our magnificent decade, the swirling 1950s, when Australia believed in itself as never before. It was privatised, part of the Hawke-Keating reforms, in the early ’90s.
So many of Australia’s biggest companies – Commonwealth Bank, Telstra, CSL, Qantas – are former government corporations.
Qantas now inhabits a kind of grey zone. It is no longer government owned so it isn’t held directly accountable through the political system, parliamentary questions to the shareholding ministers and the like. At the same time, it’s not disciplined or held accountable by full-blooded competition. It is, par excellence, a central part of the cosy oligopoly of our political economy. Qantas is notionally regulated by the government. But as many key figures put to me this week, Qantas in effect has captured the regulator. Former Liberal treasurer Peter Costello hails Qantas as the most effective lobbyist in Australia.
The Australian Financial Review has run a campaign concerning Qantas giving a membership of its exclusive Chairman’s Lounge to the Prime Minister’s son, Nathan. I have asked many Chairman’s Lounge members, including former prime ministers, whether their membership ever extended to any of their adult children. No one had heard of such a thing. It goes without saying that there is not a speck of discredit attaching to Albanese’s son. But this is really not a good look, not at all.
Zoom the lens out a bit more. Travelling through the Qantas terminal at Melbourne for a domestic flight is an exercise in class distinctions. Cattle class buy their coffees, for as much as $7 a cup, in the crowded public facilities. The public toilets are often pretty crook too.
One level higher up is the Qantas Club, basically for frequent flyers above a certain points threshold. You get barista coffee for free. The club is often crowded but pleasant. A narrow range of snacks is available, a few desks where you can plug in your laptop, one or two TVs on news stations, though the volume is too low to hear. There’s no outside window but a narrow section with an interior view of the check-in hall.
One step better is the business class lounge. Here are floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking blue skies and the endlessly absorbing rituals of tarmac management, with planes coming and going. A much wider range of food and drinks are on offer, more folks making the coffee, shorter queues.
Beyond this is the highest level, the Chairman’s Lounge. Here is an Elysian oasis, a balm for the spirit. It’s hushed and spacious; discreet staff take your order for poached eggs or smoked salmon, the finest wines are brought to your lounge, attentive staff fix boarding passes and flight arrangements. Here the great and the good, and all federal politicians, mingle.
It’s a remarkably stratified, graded, social class experience for such a notionally egalitarian nation. I’ve been to most of the Qantas Chairman’s Lounges in Australia, only as someone’s guest of course. Most airlines around the world have privilege lounges. Qantas gives a lounge membership to every federal politician (yes, the Greens revolutionaries lap up the bosses’ cham*pagne), many senior public servants and titans of industry. It’s sublimely effective corporate lobbying.
The whole nation in a way is in on the Qantas fix. Because foreign airlines are so restricted in Australia, and in our domestic market, Qantas is more or less a monopoly, and it makes sense for everybody to invest effort into their Qantas frequent flyer membership.
All this cosiness, however, leads to seriously sub-optimal outcomes. Webber points out to Inquirer that Qantas is still operating below the capacity it had before Covid, while many foreign airlines have been kept out or kept below the level they want to operate at.
He says: “Qantas keeps capacity at pre-Covid levels, drip-feeds extra capacity into the system very slowly and generates huge profits by charging very high fares.” With capacity way below demand, oligopoly delivers monopoly profits.
Here’s where absolutely everything about the Qatar Airways decision looks terrible.
It would be wrong to demonise Joyce. In his early years as chief executive he perhaps saved the airline. As a former government corporation, Qantas received huge advantages on its privatisation, not least that its debt was forgiven. And it has enjoyed huge regulatory advantages ever since. But it also had legacy issues, especially entanglement with the old industrial relations system, with all its inefficiency and enterprise-killing irrationality.
The Albanese government is busy restoring the worst features of the old IR system, which will be another drag on the economy. Joyce had the courage to break the union stranglehold on Qantas. It was a tough battle. He pioneered the immensely successful partnership with Emirates. And his plans to fly direct, non-stop flights from east coast Australia to London and New York are visionary. But he stayed too long, became too arrogant and way, way, way too political. Recently Joyce committed Qantas to supporting the Yes campaign in the voice referendum. This is a partisan issue, the government on one side, the opposition on the other. Half the nation is against the idea. But Joyce paints Qantas planes with a Yes sign and offers to fly Yes campaigners around Australia for free, not doing the same for No campaigners. It’s unaccountable political power. It’s undemocratic.
And how does this all look? Qantas does personal favours for the Prime Minister’s family, then publicly commits in a big way to the government’s most controversial political campaign, and then – “Deidre Chambers what a coincidence!” – the government takes an irrational regulatory decision that keeps out a Qantas competitor and contributes directly to the Qantas bottom line.
No doubt everyone’s motives are pure, but it’s a horrible look. Dutton and McKenzie flatly accuse the government of “running a protection racket for Qantas”.
Joyce’s arrogant political campaigning is inherently undemocratic. The No campaigners, however, believe popular resentment at Qantas’s constant political hectoring is one of their greatest assets, as people react against Qantas bossiness. Not only does Qantas instruct the public what to think on same sex marriage, Israel Folau and the voice referendum but on every Qantas flight there is a welcome to country and/or an acknowledgment of Aboriginal elders. In a secular and egalitarian democracy like ours, this is both absurd and potentially dangerous. At the height of Australia’s adherence to formal Christianity, it was only spasmodically that at a normal public function someone was called on to say grace. Australians were generally allowed whatever private thoughts they liked.
But now the worship of woke identity politics is so severe that we must genuflect in pious prayer to it several times a day. Resentment at these absurd rituals is not resentment at Aboriginal Australians. But Qantas will generate such resentment in time.
Part of today’s corporate political activism is to earn goodwill from governments, but it also springs from the ESG movement, for companies to act and invest in approved environmental, social and governance ways. This means global warming schtick and left of centre identity politics.
John O’Sullivan, in the September issue of Quadrant, argues Western nations are developing into “managerial party-states, softer than China but rooted in the same social-credit system of control”. He quotes NS Lyons: “There can be no neutral institutions in a party-state. The party-state’s enemies are the institution’s enemies, or the institution is an enemy of the party-state (which is not a profitable position to be in).”
People are annoyed with Qantas mainly because of punitive airfares, endless delays and cancellations, low standards of service generally, the often shabby state of the planes (certainly compared with Asian or Middle Eastern airlines), and until recently the water torture insanity of trying to get through to it on the phone. Oh, and the fairly obscene size of Joyce’s remuneration and bonuses. But Qantas’s politics play a part too. Many people disagree with Qantas over the political issues it spruiks, using shareholders funds and inflicting propaganda on innocent travellers.
If you’re annoyed about that sort of thing, when Qantas is criticised your reaction is not so much protective of an Australian icon – who shot Bambi? – but, rather, I’m glad somebody cut those bullies down to size.
Qantas has become dangerous for the Albanese government. It cannot any longer deploy its goodwill to assist the government on political issues. Instead it generates resentment as part of the elite celebrity culture that is so spectacularly out of touch with normal reality.
The government in parliament this week seemed to be reciting the most ludicrous of Qantas’s talking points. Early on one minister said the Qatar Airways decision was to help Qantas, another that it was to secure Australian jobs, then that it would distort the market if Qatar had too many flights. Then according to King there were vague and slightly sinister “national interest” reasons. Then King said it was partly because some Australian passengers had been subject to grossly improper invasive searches at Hamad airport in 2020, though this had certainly not been Qatar Airways’ doing. Foreign Minister Penny Wong even rang the Qatari Prime Minister this week to speak about the incident. She’d never done so before. It looked like a grubbily transparent effort to throw up a smokescreen of distraction around a plainly absurd decision on Qatar Airways.
The Prime Minister and other ministers repeatedly said Qatar Airways was welcome to increase its capacity at Adelaide, Cairns, the Gold Coast, Canberra. None of these makes sense for Qatar Airways. But if there’s some moral offence quotient in stopping it from competing against Qantas in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Perth, surely the same moral reasons apply in Adelaide, Canberra etc.
Sky News journalist Andrew Clennell made surely the shrewdest remark: “Sometimes in these cases it’s actually best just to tell the truth.”
Oligopoly economies have their appeal. They tend to be stable. All the big players have their assured place, everyone tries for a cut, or a crumb, of the pie. But they are also complacent, stagnant systems. The bar to entry is too high. The demand for goodies is insatiable. The growth potential is slow. Ultim*ately they can’t pay the bills, ultimately they explode in frustration
We live in a time of economic stagnation and cultural dislocation, a time of so many fallen Australian icons – Holden out of business, AMP charging dead people premiums, the Commonwealth Bank’s scandals, the Wallabies forgetting how to play rugby, Captain Cook, Rolf Harris. The success of the Matildas in the women’s World Cup briefly gave us back one icon; for a short moment we were allowed to sing and celebrate Waltzing Matilda again. Once our national song, it has been latterly banished by woke.
Is Qantas a fallen icon now? The Qantas bottom line is in rude good health. But do we still love it?
Greg SheridanOnce, the nation loved Qantas with abandon. The little Aussie battler that started off in Cloncurry 100 years ago and grew up to be a national champion, the spirit of Australia, the flying kangaroo. Once, every Australian hoped that if they flew, it would be Qantas.
Now, as its long-time impresario, public face and emperor Alan Joyce quickly scuttles off into the sunset, Qantas is the nation’s most complained about company. Its service is mediocre, it’s wildly expensive and involved in a bewildering conflagration of controversies.
The decline of the Qantas good name encompasses several fairly tragic tales of modern Australia, a land of ineffective governance, modest and patchy performance, unjustified complacency, debilitating cultural confusion, and a growing divide between insiders and outsiders, between the Chairman’s Lounge and cattle class.
It’s hard to know who has handled controversy worse, Qantas or the Albanese government.
In July, Transport Minister Catherine King refused a request from Qatar Airways for 21 more flights a week to Australia’s main airports. That’s a million extra seats coming to Australia every year. The benefits in tourism alone would be hundreds of millions of dollars, plus the extra freight capacity and greater choice for Australian flyers.
Plus inevitably lower airfares. Jayne Hrdlicka, Virgin Australia chief executive, claims it could have lowered airfares by 40 per cent. King labels such estimates ridiculous.
The big beneficiary of the Qatar Airways decision is Qantas – no extra competition from a superior airline, no need to reduce punitive airfares.
Simultaneously, the Australian Competition & Consumer Commission has taken action against Qantas in the Federal Court. The ACCC says Qantas sold tickets for more than 8000 flights it had already cancelled. It wants a penalty in the hundreds of millions of dollars.
Qantas also had to backflip on its policy to extinguish by December 31 more than $500m worth of flight credits from the Covid period still held with Qantas and Jetstar by travellers in Australia and overseas. Qantas had made it quite hard to redeem credits. Not only were there, until very recently, the familiar epic telephone wait times but customers can’t use a credit even for a spouse or child.
Other airlines accuse Qantas of “slot hoarding”. Sydney airport has a limited number of landing slots. Qantas holds a huge number. Even now Qantas is not flying at its pre-Covid capacity but retains many slots it never uses. This prevents competition.
The Qatar Airways controversy has a way to run. Opposition transport spokeswoman Bridget McKenzie has succeeded in setting up a Senate select committee to investigate the decision.
In parliament this week the Albanese government looked all over the shop like a bad baby’s breakfast. It couldn’t answer simple questions, couldn’t sustain a coherent explanation for the decision. It looked rattled.
It’s worth taking a step or two back from the immediate controversy to consider what it reveals about our society and economy. Our economy is a mess. Our productivity is declining. Throughout the past year the amount of economic activity we produce per hour fell by 3.6 per cent. We are in a per capita recession. The economy is notionally growing because of high immigration, but per capita income has declined two quarters in a row. The government is busily re-regulating industrial relations so that flexibility and productivity will decline further.
But our powers of self-delusion remain formidable. Anthony Albanese said Australia had the world’s most competitive aviation market. That’s just wrong. In our domestic aviation market, more than 95 per cent of flights are undertaken by two airlines, Qantas and Virgin.
Tony Webber, former chief economist for Qantas, now chief executive of Airline Intelligence and Research, has conducted exhaustive analysis of Australia’s international aviation market and finds there are only eight routes Australia flies that are more competitive than our domestic market, with 20 routes even less competitive than our domestic market. Webber concludes we are “a far cry from the most competitive (aviation market) in the world”.
Meanwhile, Qantas, rightly in my view, cannot be sold to majority foreign ownership. Whatever that adds up to, it’s not a free market. I’m no apostle of free market absolutism. I think it’s good that we have a majority Australian-owned airline. Geoffrey Blainey, our most distinguished historian, tells Inquirer: “BHP and Qantas were both seen as nation-building organisations and enjoyed enormous support.”
But Qantas’s size and influence no longer are seen as particularly good for many Australians. There is the poor quality of service, the endless cancellations and delays, and the arrogant, prissy bossiness of Qantas, which tells its passengers what to think about every issue from gay marriage, to Israel Folau, to the proposed Indigenous voice to parliament.
Yet the Qantas bottom line looks great; a full year profit of $2.47bn just about matches the $2.7bn it got from the government during Covid.
Qantas is emblematic of the Australian economy. We are assuredly not a socialist economy, but neither are we a free market economy. We are really a fat and lazy oligopolist economy whose luck may be running out. We’re a cosy corporate state kind of dozy economy.
Of our 11 biggest companies, only two were founded in the past 100 years, Fortescue and Macquarie Bank. The rate of new business formation is very low. A few years ago a landmark Harvard Kennedy School of Government study found that while Australia was the eighth richest country, for economic complexity we ranked a pitiful 93rd. We are wealthy because we sell huge amounts of minerals. The rest is noise around our lavish, quarrelsome efforts to redistribute this wealth.
Qantas tells our story. Founded in 1920, it was a magnificent pioneer. It ran the first Flying Doctor Service, another icon. After World War II it was taken into government ownership and became part of our magnificent decade, the swirling 1950s, when Australia believed in itself as never before. It was privatised, part of the Hawke-Keating reforms, in the early ’90s.
So many of Australia’s biggest companies – Commonwealth Bank, Telstra, CSL, Qantas – are former government corporations.
Qantas now inhabits a kind of grey zone. It is no longer government owned so it isn’t held directly accountable through the political system, parliamentary questions to the shareholding ministers and the like. At the same time, it’s not disciplined or held accountable by full-blooded competition. It is, par excellence, a central part of the cosy oligopoly of our political economy. Qantas is notionally regulated by the government. But as many key figures put to me this week, Qantas in effect has captured the regulator. Former Liberal treasurer Peter Costello hails Qantas as the most effective lobbyist in Australia.
The Australian Financial Review has run a campaign concerning Qantas giving a membership of its exclusive Chairman’s Lounge to the Prime Minister’s son, Nathan. I have asked many Chairman’s Lounge members, including former prime ministers, whether their membership ever extended to any of their adult children. No one had heard of such a thing. It goes without saying that there is not a speck of discredit attaching to Albanese’s son. But this is really not a good look, not at all.
Zoom the lens out a bit more. Travelling through the Qantas terminal at Melbourne for a domestic flight is an exercise in class distinctions. Cattle class buy their coffees, for as much as $7 a cup, in the crowded public facilities. The public toilets are often pretty crook too.
One level higher up is the Qantas Club, basically for frequent flyers above a certain points threshold. You get barista coffee for free. The club is often crowded but pleasant. A narrow range of snacks is available, a few desks where you can plug in your laptop, one or two TVs on news stations, though the volume is too low to hear. There’s no outside window but a narrow section with an interior view of the check-in hall.
One step better is the business class lounge. Here are floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking blue skies and the endlessly absorbing rituals of tarmac management, with planes coming and going. A much wider range of food and drinks are on offer, more folks making the coffee, shorter queues.
Beyond this is the highest level, the Chairman’s Lounge. Here is an Elysian oasis, a balm for the spirit. It’s hushed and spacious; discreet staff take your order for poached eggs or smoked salmon, the finest wines are brought to your lounge, attentive staff fix boarding passes and flight arrangements. Here the great and the good, and all federal politicians, mingle.
It’s a remarkably stratified, graded, social class experience for such a notionally egalitarian nation. I’ve been to most of the Qantas Chairman’s Lounges in Australia, only as someone’s guest of course. Most airlines around the world have privilege lounges. Qantas gives a lounge membership to every federal politician (yes, the Greens revolutionaries lap up the bosses’ cham*pagne), many senior public servants and titans of industry. It’s sublimely effective corporate lobbying.
The whole nation in a way is in on the Qantas fix. Because foreign airlines are so restricted in Australia, and in our domestic market, Qantas is more or less a monopoly, and it makes sense for everybody to invest effort into their Qantas frequent flyer membership.
All this cosiness, however, leads to seriously sub-optimal outcomes. Webber points out to Inquirer that Qantas is still operating below the capacity it had before Covid, while many foreign airlines have been kept out or kept below the level they want to operate at.
He says: “Qantas keeps capacity at pre-Covid levels, drip-feeds extra capacity into the system very slowly and generates huge profits by charging very high fares.” With capacity way below demand, oligopoly delivers monopoly profits.
Here’s where absolutely everything about the Qatar Airways decision looks terrible.
It would be wrong to demonise Joyce. In his early years as chief executive he perhaps saved the airline. As a former government corporation, Qantas received huge advantages on its privatisation, not least that its debt was forgiven. And it has enjoyed huge regulatory advantages ever since. But it also had legacy issues, especially entanglement with the old industrial relations system, with all its inefficiency and enterprise-killing irrationality.
The Albanese government is busy restoring the worst features of the old IR system, which will be another drag on the economy. Joyce had the courage to break the union stranglehold on Qantas. It was a tough battle. He pioneered the immensely successful partnership with Emirates. And his plans to fly direct, non-stop flights from east coast Australia to London and New York are visionary. But he stayed too long, became too arrogant and way, way, way too political. Recently Joyce committed Qantas to supporting the Yes campaign in the voice referendum. This is a partisan issue, the government on one side, the opposition on the other. Half the nation is against the idea. But Joyce paints Qantas planes with a Yes sign and offers to fly Yes campaigners around Australia for free, not doing the same for No campaigners. It’s unaccountable political power. It’s undemocratic.
And how does this all look? Qantas does personal favours for the Prime Minister’s family, then publicly commits in a big way to the government’s most controversial political campaign, and then – “Deidre Chambers what a coincidence!” – the government takes an irrational regulatory decision that keeps out a Qantas competitor and contributes directly to the Qantas bottom line.
No doubt everyone’s motives are pure, but it’s a horrible look. Dutton and McKenzie flatly accuse the government of “running a protection racket for Qantas”.
Joyce’s arrogant political campaigning is inherently undemocratic. The No campaigners, however, believe popular resentment at Qantas’s constant political hectoring is one of their greatest assets, as people react against Qantas bossiness. Not only does Qantas instruct the public what to think on same sex marriage, Israel Folau and the voice referendum but on every Qantas flight there is a welcome to country and/or an acknowledgment of Aboriginal elders. In a secular and egalitarian democracy like ours, this is both absurd and potentially dangerous. At the height of Australia’s adherence to formal Christianity, it was only spasmodically that at a normal public function someone was called on to say grace. Australians were generally allowed whatever private thoughts they liked.
But now the worship of woke identity politics is so severe that we must genuflect in pious prayer to it several times a day. Resentment at these absurd rituals is not resentment at Aboriginal Australians. But Qantas will generate such resentment in time.
Part of today’s corporate political activism is to earn goodwill from governments, but it also springs from the ESG movement, for companies to act and invest in approved environmental, social and governance ways. This means global warming schtick and left of centre identity politics.
John O’Sullivan, in the September issue of Quadrant, argues Western nations are developing into “managerial party-states, softer than China but rooted in the same social-credit system of control”. He quotes NS Lyons: “There can be no neutral institutions in a party-state. The party-state’s enemies are the institution’s enemies, or the institution is an enemy of the party-state (which is not a profitable position to be in).”
People are annoyed with Qantas mainly because of punitive airfares, endless delays and cancellations, low standards of service generally, the often shabby state of the planes (certainly compared with Asian or Middle Eastern airlines), and until recently the water torture insanity of trying to get through to it on the phone. Oh, and the fairly obscene size of Joyce’s remuneration and bonuses. But Qantas’s politics play a part too. Many people disagree with Qantas over the political issues it spruiks, using shareholders funds and inflicting propaganda on innocent travellers.
If you’re annoyed about that sort of thing, when Qantas is criticised your reaction is not so much protective of an Australian icon – who shot Bambi? – but, rather, I’m glad somebody cut those bullies down to size.
Qantas has become dangerous for the Albanese government. It cannot any longer deploy its goodwill to assist the government on political issues. Instead it generates resentment as part of the elite celebrity culture that is so spectacularly out of touch with normal reality.
The government in parliament this week seemed to be reciting the most ludicrous of Qantas’s talking points. Early on one minister said the Qatar Airways decision was to help Qantas, another that it was to secure Australian jobs, then that it would distort the market if Qatar had too many flights. Then according to King there were vague and slightly sinister “national interest” reasons. Then King said it was partly because some Australian passengers had been subject to grossly improper invasive searches at Hamad airport in 2020, though this had certainly not been Qatar Airways’ doing. Foreign Minister Penny Wong even rang the Qatari Prime Minister this week to speak about the incident. She’d never done so before. It looked like a grubbily transparent effort to throw up a smokescreen of distraction around a plainly absurd decision on Qatar Airways.
The Prime Minister and other ministers repeatedly said Qatar Airways was welcome to increase its capacity at Adelaide, Cairns, the Gold Coast, Canberra. None of these makes sense for Qatar Airways. But if there’s some moral offence quotient in stopping it from competing against Qantas in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Perth, surely the same moral reasons apply in Adelaide, Canberra etc.
Sky News journalist Andrew Clennell made surely the shrewdest remark: “Sometimes in these cases it’s actually best just to tell the truth.”
Oligopoly economies have their appeal. They tend to be stable. All the big players have their assured place, everyone tries for a cut, or a crumb, of the pie. But they are also complacent, stagnant systems. The bar to entry is too high. The demand for goodies is insatiable. The growth potential is slow. Ultim*ately they can’t pay the bills, ultimately they explode in frustration
We live in a time of economic stagnation and cultural dislocation, a time of so many fallen Australian icons – Holden out of business, AMP charging dead people premiums, the Commonwealth Bank’s scandals, the Wallabies forgetting how to play rugby, Captain Cook, Rolf Harris. The success of the Matildas in the women’s World Cup briefly gave us back one icon; for a short moment we were allowed to sing and celebrate Waltzing Matilda again. Once our national song, it has been latterly banished by woke.
Is Qantas a fallen icon now? The Qantas bottom line is in rude good health. But do we still love it?
The following 5 users liked this post by dragon man:
Lots of truth telling in the above quote, but still rather amusing to see how brave our media have become, now that Qantas or rather Qantas senior management, have become socially acceptable punch bags. For rather a long time the Fin Review and their columnist; Loose-Canon, were stand out exceptions to the fawning drivel published by most and paid the price in being removed from circulation along with other spiteful, petty and not so petty retaliatory measures. Of course a certain sector of the populace huffed something about "Murdoch media" and automatically dismissed what was said, but there is a certain satisfaction in seeing the old adage, "...., but you can't fool all the people, all the time" being proven once again.
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Lots of truth telling in the above quote, but still rather amusing to see how brave our media have become, now that Qantas or rather Qantas senior management, have become socially acceptable punch bags. For rather a long time the Fin Review and their columnist; Loose-Canon, were stand out exceptions to the fawning drivel published by most and paid the price in being removed from circulation along with other spiteful, petty and not so petty retaliatory measures. Of course a certain sector of the populace huffed something about "Murdoch media" and automatically dismissed what was said, but there is a certain satisfaction in seeing the old adage, "...., but you can't fool all the people, all the time" being proven once again.
And yes Sheridan/Murdoch media can be dismissed fairly easily, they have their own agenda which mostly includes bashing Labor. Didn’t see them lay the boot in when Morrison was posing in a flight deck with a pilot’s cap on. Remember back to 2011 when Joe Hildebrand in Murdoch’s Daily Telegraph wrote a series of pilot bashing articles when the IR disputes were happening? ““Pilots paid higher than PM”, “Pilots want spas and facials”, “Pilots demand $200k pay rise?”
People have short memories.
Last edited by dr dre; 8th Sep 2023 at 23:12.
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This quote referred to the 65 FIRM orders in 2005! The CP was spruiking similar growth at the same time
We all know how that ended. This mob talk a big game and we should remain hopeful things might change however I won’t be holding my breath. Ask for the Winton fleet numbers in 2032? You won’t get an answer yet we have the Sunrise and Fysh plans?
“This is a very, very big commitment by Qantas to growth,” Qantas Airways Ltd. Chief Executive Geoff Dixon told reporters.
This quote referred to the 65 FIRM orders in 2005! The CP was spruiking similar growth at the same time
We all know how that ended. This mob talk a big game and we should remain hopeful things might change however I won’t be holding my breath. Ask for the Winton fleet numbers in 2032? You won’t get an answer yet we have the Sunrise and Fysh plans?
This quote referred to the 65 FIRM orders in 2005! The CP was spruiking similar growth at the same time
We all know how that ended. This mob talk a big game and we should remain hopeful things might change however I won’t be holding my breath. Ask for the Winton fleet numbers in 2032? You won’t get an answer yet we have the Sunrise and Fysh plans?
I think the delay in extra 321 orders had to do with the delay in final approval for the XLR model, but I’m told narrowbodies don’t have as long a lead in time for delivery compared to widebodies so the priority was to lock in the 350/787 orders first.
Let’s hope so. I’ve been around far too long to put faith in 10year fleet plans. Looking at the market QF want to serve a 50/50 mox of 220’s & 321’s makes more sense than a 30/70 mix.
But those numbers do indicate that, for now, there’s no behind the scenes plan to outsource a large proportion of SH flying permanently out of mainline.
It just gets better and better.
Qantas chief executive Alan Joyce. Photo: AAP
The Qantas Code of Conduct and Ethics is perhaps the most ignored and hypocritical document in corporate Australia. Michael Sainsbury checks out the myriad breaches.
There is, perhaps, no more damning indictment of corporate hypocrisy than the behaviour of Qantas, its senior management and board when compared to their own lofty internal Code of Conduct and Ethics.
The 13-page document is peppered with the words: ethics, respect, judgment, trust, dignity, fairness and equity all of which have been in as short supply as on-time flights.
There are clear breaches of the Code of Conduct by the national carrier and also by its board of directors, who are responsible for the company, and its former ‘star’ chief executive Alan Joyce; breaches on every single page. We will parse these shortly.
Although Qantas is by no means the only blue chip Australian company to breach regularly its own stated ethics code, it stands out as a symbol of corporate malfeasance as it is Australia’s best known brand world-wide, our biggest recipient of government subsidies in history, and the number one example of the rabid pursuit of profits corroding customer staff and customer confidence.
The Qantas Code of Conduct is a document buried in deep in the bowels of the company’s website and that appears on page a of last year’s annual report. You have to know where to look.
“The Qantas Group’s Non-Negotiable Business Principles are: a) we are committed to safety as our first priority; b) we comply with laws and regulations; c) we treat people with respect; d) we act with honesty and integrity, upholding ethical standards; e) we are committed to true and fair financial reporting; f) we are committed to environmental sustainability; g) we have a responsibility to safeguard the Qantas Group’s reputation, brands, property, assets and information; and h) we proactively manage risk.”
Employees and customers have not been treated with respect, safety has been compromised by cost-cutting, the company is in myriad alleged breaches of competition laws, ‘honesty and integrity’ does not involve the chief executive selling his personal shares into a share buy-back, environmentally (although perhaps unavoidably) this is one of Australia’s biggest polluters and is big into greenwashing, the brand and reputation have been trashed. This risk has not been ‘proactively managed’.
The Qantas Group requires a high degree of caution in relation to the giving and receiving of gifts, benefits (including expenses and entertainment) and hospitality (GBH) to or from Public Officials. On that basis, Personnel must: (a) never offer, give or receive Anything of Value, including cash or cash equivalent (including a daily allowance or per diem), (d) regardless of value, is not given or received at a frequency which could reasonably be seen as being intended to improperly influence any person or reward an action
Qantas is one of the biggest influence peddlers in Australia. With zero transparency, the company (at the CEO’s pleasure) invites sitting politicians, heads of government agencies, corporate chieftains and High Court judges to its Qantas Chairman’s Lounge.
In itself, this is an egregious breach of the Code. Members receive flight upgrades, high quality food and liquor and valet service – such as a direct phone contact to change flight details – not available to other passengers. Once, no longer in a position of influence their memberships are often revoked.
3.2 Compliance with the law means observing the letter and spirit of the law as well as managing the business of the Qantas Group so that the Group and its Personnel are recognised as “good corporate citizens” at all times in the way they conduct business and in connection with their employment.
Qantas has been found twice by the Federal Court to have illegally sacked 1,700 workers. The case is now on appeal at the High Court. That, along with the ACCC case against Qantas for illegally flogging tickets to ‘Ghost Flights’ would appear to make a mockery of the ‘letter of the law’ while the ‘spirit of the law’ has been smashed umpteen times, for instance in the corporate strategy to set up dozens of subsidiaries to skirt around paying union awards for employees. We could go on with spirit. Tax springs to mind.
3.3 The Qantas Group supports a “zero tolerance” approach to crime and corruption in relation to the Group’s operations.
Again, there appears to be quite a bit of tolerance towards corruption, or at least the perception of corruption. Alan Joyce, if he knew about the ACCC sting, which he should have and very likely did earlier this year, should not have sold $17m worth of shares into the Qantas share buy-back at far higher prices than today.
Insider Trading: Legal prohibition applicable to all Personnel
3.55 The principal insider trading prohibition in Australian law is contained in section 1043A of the Corporations Act.
3.56 Personnel must not Deal in Qantas Securities while in possession of Material Non-Public Information.
The board of directors too should never have allowed him to do this on the basis that a lawsuit for deliberately misleading and deceptive conduct over the 8,000 phantom flights was ‘material information’ which should have been disclosed to the ASX under the ‘continuous disclosure’ regime to allow fair trading for investors. It was not disclosed until two week ago. Joyce sold in June.
Disclosure is both an ethical and a legal requirement.
Inclusion and diversity 3.81 The Qantas Group is committed to building and fostering a culture in which inclusion and diversity is valued and championed, and to providing a workplace that is safe, inclusive, respectful and where all our people feel they belong. This means that Personnel must: (a) be proactive and take responsibility for their part in fostering and maintaining an inclusive culture; (b) treat Personnel, Qantas Group customers and suppliers, and other people with trust, dignity, respect, fairness and equity and not engage in bullying, harassment, discrimination or victimisation; (c) be beyond reproach in matters of trust, honesty and confidentiality and never misuse any privilege, authority or status; and (d) co-operate with other Personnel for the benefit of customers.
Such has been the decline in corporate culture during the past 15 years, and the bitterness between staff and management, due to extreme cost cutting and outsourcing that it has affected operations quite severely. This is evident in the views of thousands of Australian customers on social media complaining about services. Due to executive and board avarice, neither customers or employees have been treated with dignity, respect or fairness.
This might have been vaguely understandable if Qantas was an entity fighting for survival in a free market but this company received $2.7 billion in government subsidies such as JobKeeper. It is a monopolist propped up by public money.
One stand-out case of employee satisfaction is the video which emerged online of Qantas baggage handlers literally chucking peoples luggage around. The morale has been low for years, from pilots and crew to engineers, baggage handlers and other employees.
In the Qantas Group Suppliers Code of Conduct one section particularly caught our eye.
LABOUR AND HUMAN RIGHTS
The Qantas Group is committed to the respect of Human Rights as set out in the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights. We expect all our suppliers to adhere to the same human rights standards as we do, and to treat others with trust, dignity, respect, fairness and equity. Our objective is to ensure the working conditions of workers in our supply chain meet applicable legislation and relevant labour standards, including those set out in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and the International Labour Organisation Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work.
Yet Qantas has outsourced work, that is part of its supply chain to countries in the Middle East where homosexuality is illegal and can be punishable by death, where women are treated as second class citizens and the ill-treated treatment of immigrant workers is extremely well documented.
The hypocrisy, from a company that pretends to champion LGBTQI rights, for instance, is breathtaking.
5.2 Similar disciplinary action will be taken against any supervisor or Manager who directly approves and/or condones such breach or has knowledge of the breach and does not immediately take appropriate remedial action.
5.3 Breach of applicable laws or regulations may also result in prosecution by appropriate authorities. The Qantas Group will not pay: (a) directly or indirectly, any penalties imposed on Personnel as a result of a breach of law or regulation; or (b) the legal costs of Personnel convicted of breaching such law or regulation. 5.4 All material breaches will be reported to the Board.
Assorted business lobby groups have kept mum on the Qantas debacle because they, like the Qantas board, are part of the same club: the big corporate directors’ club; and literally, as member of the Qantas Chairman’s Lounge.
Their view no doubt will be that the early resignation of Alan Joyce is a scalp which salves and solves the problem. Yet the decline of Qantas is no run of the mill corporate scandal, it represents everything which is wrong with business in Australia: the failure (ACCC excepted now, belatedly) of the political classes and governance bodies to keep corporations in check, and the pursuit of profit and personal gain to the point of management incompetence.
It represents extreme corporate welfare and the fall in public confidence not just in government but in all large institutions. That is why the Qantas scandal is such a big story.
As for culpability, the point of company directors is to take ultimate responsibility for the company. Clearly they have failed ethically yet this is a legal duty too. For the board to continue in this climate, weathering the storm of scandals – presiding over what was once a national treasure of which Australians could be proud – is not on.
If the buck really stops with the board, as the directors’ lobby claims it does, they should fall on their swords, for it is they who are responsible for treating customers, staff and the Australian public with such disrespect.
Then the task of rebuilding can begin.
The Qantas Code of Conduct and Ethics … yes it’s real
by Michael Sainsbury | Sep 9, 2023 | Business, Latest PostsQantas chief executive Alan Joyce. Photo: AAP The Qantas Code of Conduct and Ethics is perhaps the most ignored and hypocritical document in corporate Australia. Michael Sainsbury checks out the myriad breaches.
There is, perhaps, no more damning indictment of corporate hypocrisy than the behaviour of Qantas, its senior management and board when compared to their own lofty internal Code of Conduct and Ethics.
The 13-page document is peppered with the words: ethics, respect, judgment, trust, dignity, fairness and equity all of which have been in as short supply as on-time flights.
There are clear breaches of the Code of Conduct by the national carrier and also by its board of directors, who are responsible for the company, and its former ‘star’ chief executive Alan Joyce; breaches on every single page. We will parse these shortly.
Although Qantas is by no means the only blue chip Australian company to breach regularly its own stated ethics code, it stands out as a symbol of corporate malfeasance as it is Australia’s best known brand world-wide, our biggest recipient of government subsidies in history, and the number one example of the rabid pursuit of profits corroding customer staff and customer confidence.
ACCC sting
With the ACCC dragging Qantas into court for the immense deception which was selling tickets to 8,000 cancelled flights, there are calls to strip Joyce and others of their bonuses. The myriad breaches of the Qantas Code will no doubt fortify the board and major shareholders in dealing with this issue and restoring confidence in the airline and its management.The Qantas Code of Conduct is a document buried in deep in the bowels of the company’s website and that appears on page a of last year’s annual report. You have to know where to look.
Business Principles: ‘non-negotiable’ or non-existent?
Even the quickest glance at the document, page 1, sets the alarm bells ringing:“The Qantas Group’s Non-Negotiable Business Principles are: a) we are committed to safety as our first priority; b) we comply with laws and regulations; c) we treat people with respect; d) we act with honesty and integrity, upholding ethical standards; e) we are committed to true and fair financial reporting; f) we are committed to environmental sustainability; g) we have a responsibility to safeguard the Qantas Group’s reputation, brands, property, assets and information; and h) we proactively manage risk.”
Employees and customers have not been treated with respect, safety has been compromised by cost-cutting, the company is in myriad alleged breaches of competition laws, ‘honesty and integrity’ does not involve the chief executive selling his personal shares into a share buy-back, environmentally (although perhaps unavoidably) this is one of Australia’s biggest polluters and is big into greenwashing, the brand and reputation have been trashed. This risk has not been ‘proactively managed’.
Influence peddling
Then from 3.16. Requirements come this:The Qantas Group requires a high degree of caution in relation to the giving and receiving of gifts, benefits (including expenses and entertainment) and hospitality (GBH) to or from Public Officials. On that basis, Personnel must: (a) never offer, give or receive Anything of Value, including cash or cash equivalent (including a daily allowance or per diem), (d) regardless of value, is not given or received at a frequency which could reasonably be seen as being intended to improperly influence any person or reward an action
Qantas is one of the biggest influence peddlers in Australia. With zero transparency, the company (at the CEO’s pleasure) invites sitting politicians, heads of government agencies, corporate chieftains and High Court judges to its Qantas Chairman’s Lounge.
In itself, this is an egregious breach of the Code. Members receive flight upgrades, high quality food and liquor and valet service – such as a direct phone contact to change flight details – not available to other passengers. Once, no longer in a position of influence their memberships are often revoked.
3.2 Compliance with the law means observing the letter and spirit of the law as well as managing the business of the Qantas Group so that the Group and its Personnel are recognised as “good corporate citizens” at all times in the way they conduct business and in connection with their employment.
Qantas has been found twice by the Federal Court to have illegally sacked 1,700 workers. The case is now on appeal at the High Court. That, along with the ACCC case against Qantas for illegally flogging tickets to ‘Ghost Flights’ would appear to make a mockery of the ‘letter of the law’ while the ‘spirit of the law’ has been smashed umpteen times, for instance in the corporate strategy to set up dozens of subsidiaries to skirt around paying union awards for employees. We could go on with spirit. Tax springs to mind.
3.3 The Qantas Group supports a “zero tolerance” approach to crime and corruption in relation to the Group’s operations.
Again, there appears to be quite a bit of tolerance towards corruption, or at least the perception of corruption. Alan Joyce, if he knew about the ACCC sting, which he should have and very likely did earlier this year, should not have sold $17m worth of shares into the Qantas share buy-back at far higher prices than today.
Insider Trading: Legal prohibition applicable to all Personnel
3.55 The principal insider trading prohibition in Australian law is contained in section 1043A of the Corporations Act.
3.56 Personnel must not Deal in Qantas Securities while in possession of Material Non-Public Information.
The board of directors too should never have allowed him to do this on the basis that a lawsuit for deliberately misleading and deceptive conduct over the 8,000 phantom flights was ‘material information’ which should have been disclosed to the ASX under the ‘continuous disclosure’ regime to allow fair trading for investors. It was not disclosed until two week ago. Joyce sold in June.
Disclosure is both an ethical and a legal requirement.
Inclusion and diversity 3.81 The Qantas Group is committed to building and fostering a culture in which inclusion and diversity is valued and championed, and to providing a workplace that is safe, inclusive, respectful and where all our people feel they belong. This means that Personnel must: (a) be proactive and take responsibility for their part in fostering and maintaining an inclusive culture; (b) treat Personnel, Qantas Group customers and suppliers, and other people with trust, dignity, respect, fairness and equity and not engage in bullying, harassment, discrimination or victimisation; (c) be beyond reproach in matters of trust, honesty and confidentiality and never misuse any privilege, authority or status; and (d) co-operate with other Personnel for the benefit of customers.
Such has been the decline in corporate culture during the past 15 years, and the bitterness between staff and management, due to extreme cost cutting and outsourcing that it has affected operations quite severely. This is evident in the views of thousands of Australian customers on social media complaining about services. Due to executive and board avarice, neither customers or employees have been treated with dignity, respect or fairness.
This might have been vaguely understandable if Qantas was an entity fighting for survival in a free market but this company received $2.7 billion in government subsidies such as JobKeeper. It is a monopolist propped up by public money.
One stand-out case of employee satisfaction is the video which emerged online of Qantas baggage handlers literally chucking peoples luggage around. The morale has been low for years, from pilots and crew to engineers, baggage handlers and other employees.
Then there’s the Suppliers Code
It’s not just customers and staff who have been victims of Qantas professed very high ethical standards, it’s suppliers as well.In the Qantas Group Suppliers Code of Conduct one section particularly caught our eye.
LABOUR AND HUMAN RIGHTS
The Qantas Group is committed to the respect of Human Rights as set out in the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights. We expect all our suppliers to adhere to the same human rights standards as we do, and to treat others with trust, dignity, respect, fairness and equity. Our objective is to ensure the working conditions of workers in our supply chain meet applicable legislation and relevant labour standards, including those set out in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and the International Labour Organisation Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work.
Yet Qantas has outsourced work, that is part of its supply chain to countries in the Middle East where homosexuality is illegal and can be punishable by death, where women are treated as second class citizens and the ill-treated treatment of immigrant workers is extremely well documented.
The hypocrisy, from a company that pretends to champion LGBTQI rights, for instance, is breathtaking.
Breaches are for workers, not bosses
5.1 Any breach of applicable laws, prevailing business ethics or other aspects of the Code will result in disciplinary action. Depending on the severity of the breach, such disciplinary action may include reprimand, formal warning, demotion or termination of employment.5.2 Similar disciplinary action will be taken against any supervisor or Manager who directly approves and/or condones such breach or has knowledge of the breach and does not immediately take appropriate remedial action.
5.3 Breach of applicable laws or regulations may also result in prosecution by appropriate authorities. The Qantas Group will not pay: (a) directly or indirectly, any penalties imposed on Personnel as a result of a breach of law or regulation; or (b) the legal costs of Personnel convicted of breaching such law or regulation. 5.4 All material breaches will be reported to the Board.
Assorted business lobby groups have kept mum on the Qantas debacle because they, like the Qantas board, are part of the same club: the big corporate directors’ club; and literally, as member of the Qantas Chairman’s Lounge.
Their view no doubt will be that the early resignation of Alan Joyce is a scalp which salves and solves the problem. Yet the decline of Qantas is no run of the mill corporate scandal, it represents everything which is wrong with business in Australia: the failure (ACCC excepted now, belatedly) of the political classes and governance bodies to keep corporations in check, and the pursuit of profit and personal gain to the point of management incompetence.
It represents extreme corporate welfare and the fall in public confidence not just in government but in all large institutions. That is why the Qantas scandal is such a big story.
As for culpability, the point of company directors is to take ultimate responsibility for the company. Clearly they have failed ethically yet this is a legal duty too. For the board to continue in this climate, weathering the storm of scandals – presiding over what was once a national treasure of which Australians could be proud – is not on.
If the buck really stops with the board, as the directors’ lobby claims it does, they should fall on their swords, for it is they who are responsible for treating customers, staff and the Australian public with such disrespect.
Then the task of rebuilding can begin.
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Even if your prediction of 50/50 was true they have a total of 134 narrowbody aircraft they’re planning on getting, so that’s still 67 A321s. The 134 number was based on projected passenger numbers in 10 years.
That assumes all that capacity growth is Red Not Orange. I’ve heard all this before. Jet star will only ever get 5 jets! You’ll all get a seat change within 5yrs! We are only using this little business for Charter flying, This Wet lease will result in more jobs! Just to name a few of Dozens! It’s like the Battered House wife…. he’ll change now, I’m sure of it!
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I think they’ve realised the LCC market has limits. JQ has its own aircraft orders that are separate to the 134 A220/321 orders.
The new CEO, unlike the previous one, has never worked for JQ and has no emotional attachment to it
The new CEO, unlike the previous one, has never worked for JQ and has no emotional attachment to it
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In-principle agreement for up to 134 orders and purchase right options
QANTAS SELECTS AIRBUS AS PREFERRED AIRCRAFT FOR DOMESTIC FLEET RENEWAL
That’s more a hunch - you don’t hear as much about the “amazing JQ” these days. And the change in management will probably (to me) signal a shift away from JQ. Originally, 15 years ago, the plan may have been to replace most of domestic with JQ. But I think now they’ve finally realised it’s time to invest into and renew mainline. Delayed decision but the correct one.
QANTAS SELECTS AIRBUS AS PREFERRED AIRCRAFT FOR DOMESTIC FLEET RENEWAL
LCC has reached its limits?
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