Merged: Qantas:The Trashing Of A Brand
 

The recent near riots in the Sydney Qantas Club were the first on the East Coast.
On Christmas Night 2007 in Perth the same situation occurred.Federal police were called to the domestic terminal as several delays and near 40 degree temeperatures (in the terminal)brought passenger anger to flashpoint.
In Perth this was not the first time.
The emotional attachment Australians once had for Qantas has been severed.
Years of clever emotive marketing and brand building have been destoyed.
The CEO Geoff Dixon is responsible.
He has deliberately neglected his customers and his staff.His focus has been the shareholders.It is instructive to note that Dixon and his senior executives are substantial shareholders.
The creation of executive wealth has been the sole intention of Dixon and his cronies for the last seven years.The sense of entitlement displayed by these corporate deceivers is breathtaking.Dixon rubbed his hands with glee at the prospect of $60million coming his way from the sale of Qantas to private equity.
An obscenity of the greatest magnitude.
Qantas Aviation Fuel is hedged at $US72 for the remainder of this year and favourable hedging is in place for most of next year.
The strong $A is also Dixons ally.
Yet he uses rising fuel costs to deny Maintenance Staff a 5% pay increase.
Dixon will not deny himself or his executives an enormous bonus this year.
Customers have been over serviced for years and staff should be grateful to have a job...so says Dixon.
The Qantas Corporate culture is toxic.No one will make a decision for fear of reprisals.Those that do make decisions see as far ahead as the next bonus.
Why should anyone be paid a bonus to do a job that they are already being generously remunerated for?
Are pilots paid a bonus to fly the aircraft?
Are Ground Engineers paid a bonus to maintain the aircraft?
In an egalitarian democracy like Australian how does this continue unchecked ?
There is something seriously wrong when a corporate vandal in a Gucci tie is allowed to continue larceny on a such an enormous scale.
When Dixon leaves will there be anything left to salvage?
So many questions and no bloody answers.

The Shrinking Network
 

During Dixons tenure the Qantas network has shrunk.
The Qantas Group now has less than 33% of the Australian Aviation market.
When Dixon took over Qantas had 42% of the Market.
How do you turn a big airline into a small one?
Employ Dooff Dixon as the CEO.

It'd be my guess that most of that was intentional morphing of the white roo into the pointy thing.

Quote-"
"It'd be my guess that most of that was intentional morphing of the white roo into the pointy thing."

-------------

Jetstar are a bit player on the international scene.

Doesn't Emirates have something like 57 flights a week into Australia???

Intentional, not international...

....until they paint the grey aeroplanes white and stick a red tail on them! :eek: :suspect:

Dixons's toxicity has flowed on to even the most junior manager in Qantas Engineering. We are constantly told that we cost the company to much, and when asked what management intends to do about morale they say what is morale, aren't you getting paid. When aircraft come back from overseas MRO's they are on the ground for more than a week to fix all the problems with them in double the time it takes to do it properly here. All engineering managers have no operational back ground and work from a text book and a stratergy chart, and to top it off they have just employed 8 more ops managers for the Sydney region alone to find out what is going on with the schedule. These people are so far removed from the real world it is frightening! Rest assured gents the LAME's left are still keeping the excellence in the Qantas name quicker than management can remove it, but for how long I am unsure.

How much longer is it going to take before the chairman or the board act on the demise of Qantas that is happening right before us. Every frontline worker is united in their hatred of Dixon and his management team for their slow destruction of an airline.
As for trashing of the brand, well events reported by crews passing through singapore tell of another clanger in the grand scheme of things. A 744 ferried sydney to london with 3 passengers. What was that about fuel saving??

Unfortunately it appears this was the result of events that are now occuring on a daily basis at QF. Staff in singapore also have said more than 1000 passengers have been moved to other carriers, in the last week alone, in reponse to the ever increasing delays and destruction that Geoff and his team have created.
I wonder what Chairman Cliffords reponse is to all of this? Amazing his silence and lack of a statement to what is going on.

...think of the bright side, your CEO picked up a 500%+ pay rise in about 6 years and the shareholders are happy. Aren't they?:ugh:

Read up on industrial psychopathy - it's not a criminal thing, it's a behavioural thing. Also read up on narcissistic personality disorder and the narcissist as manager.

Once you get one of these in the top job, they hire others like them because people who suck their way up like to be sucked up to by their subordinates.

The narcissists deliberately get rid of anyone competent below them who may be a threat to them (for example anyone with the knowledge to contradict their ideas) and replace them with sycophants who are also narcissists.

Thus their rotten behaviour trickles down through the management structure over time.

Look for:

- a total contempt for those below them. ("Legacy Airline", "Dinosaurs", no future)

- complete lack of empathy with other humans, leading to occasionally bizarre or anti social behaviour. For example, Mr. Dixon's letter to the residents of Hamilton Island when QF was swapped with Jetstar.

- Dreams of absolute power and other fantasies.

- a huge sense of entitlement - massive rewards for themselves (The APA bid, The Christmas bottles of Grange, bonuses, shares)

- Believe they are superhuman ("The Board and Management of this company have done more than ...."). They create dumbass business strategies to boost their own egos, for example I reckon J* Asia was set up so that GD could be Chairman of something.

- and of course lying, cheating, scheming and backstabbing comes naturally to them because they have no conscience at all.

Look it up yourselves.

I was holding off putting this onto pprune, but this seems as good a thread as any. It blew my mind at first, then I thought "nah, that's not really a surprise at all".

Scene: Couple of days ago in Mel, waiting for a flight which I was paxing on. The service counter staff were pretty p*ssed off about something, and upon enquiring, this is what they told me:

The day before, a flight to Syd was overbooked by a couple of full-fare seats in Business Class. They were about to go through the process of apologetically contacting some people to see if they would travel on a different flight.

Guess who calls the manager and says "Me & my entourage are going to Syd on QF xxx. Book the seats now."?

When he was told "we're really sorry Mr CEO. The flight is oversold and they're all full-fare business." What was his response?

"I don't give a sh*t. We're going on that flight. Offload them."

I wonder if any of them were also Qantas shareholders? I mean, it's obvious to everyone, or most people at least, that Dixon has gone completely barking mad, but is there an end in sight? That is the question.

Are the shareholders happy?

Share price from a high of $6-06 down to $3-32 yesterday.

Yeah, I'm sure they're happy.

Sense of Entitlement
 

A few years ago Dixon created havoc with LHR groundstaff regarding seats for him and his wife.
Again he wanted full fare P/C passengers offloaded to accommodate his travel requirements.
Guess he didnt check southbound availability before he left Australia

Makes me want to puke whenever he travels as his boarding is preceded by the nervous and breathless ramblings one of the "premium liason staff".

"Oooh, oooh" goes the nervous ninny as they shift their weight from one foot to the other with terror in their eyes, as if they are busting for a piss. "Mr [stops to swallow] Dickson on board today" like he is some kind of f#@king god.

The last I heard he was actually a STAFF MEMBER:rolleyes:

Rarely do I get this for any actual paying passengers.:ugh::ugh::ugh:

The company is run like some tin pot African dictatorship with dickson and his team at the helm together with their pathologically twisted, sense of entitlement.

I know someone who works in the marketing department for one of the big two Australian insurance companies.

Late last year she and others in her department where involved in a coaching development program run by a third party consulting company.

Whilst I don't know who ran the course i do know what it was about.

It was ALL about brand management and how manage and leverage from, quality brands.

Qantas was specifically used as an example on how not to manage your brand:ugh:

When GD was appointed CEO of QF he is made the trustee of the airlines brand for his term. That means up holding its reputation for safety, customer service and goodwill. When he departs that reputation should have at least been maintained if not enhanced. He and his team have failed completly. If the board and new Chairman are unable to see that Rome is burning and dismiss the current management team them the institutions who are the major shareholders should call a special shareholders meeting and vote out the entire board. They dont want to delude themselves Rome is burning, they are fiddling.

Sunfish, your posts are interesting but one thing does not make sense. Why would a narcissist employ others like himself? If he did this, would'nt he be constantly watching his back for the knife weilding narcissists below him?

Screw it into the ground and let the government bail it out. Thats GD's motto.
I remember AN had 767 trouble before their demise.

UberMan
 

Certain types of individuals become drunk with power authority and money.
They become deluded and believe that the rules and laws of society
no longer apply to them.
Dixon and the upper echelon of Qantas management have reached this point.
They are above everyone and everything.Reality for them no longer exists the way it does for the rest of us.
Enron and HIH are just two companies run by people like Dixon.The megalomaniacs that ran these corporations eventually went too far and are now incarcerated.
Dixon just may escape the same fate by virtue of an early exit.
In this there will be no justice.
It will just verify to Dixon that he is untouchable.
History will not treat him well.Hindsight will see him for what he is...a vile putrid human being bereft of any business acumen what so ever.
He has been aided and abetted by the likes of Oldmeadow, Gregg and Joyce.
If Gregg or Joyce replaces Dixon Qantas will continue to wither away to nothing more than an oxidized bronze plaque on a building somewhere in Mascot .
A great tragedy that no one seems able or willing to prevent

Easy on there Blackguard,

you're holding on too tight!