"the Kiwi carrier was also seeking to recover costs incurred
when the Australian airline’s engineers held strikes last year"

I can't recall any lames that were on strike.
A few stood down by management for not
getting out of bed at 0400 on their day off.
Alaea exec prevented strikes in that case.

The Professor is right but only in Kazakhstan where they use two operators.....

This is not for any cost saving but because they could only get two...one for the pushback and the other to keep an eye out for any rampaging yak on the tarmac....

It will be interesting to see the response from the Professor about the
Apparently,this is what is happening in the US and the professor believes that it will drive QF to extinction.....

Of course The Professor might have been talking about the corporate world particularly in Australia with it's ridiculous,greedy and immoral payouts to board members when he said...

In QF? Certainly on all my domestic sectors (which is virtually all of them over the past 4 years) I've only noticed the tug driver and the ground engineer. Where did the 3 come from?

The professor is of course talking about Management when it comes to inefficiencies, industrial fat (literal fat too), blackmail. To this we could add: lethargy, selfishness, cluelessness, cooking the books, miscommunication, poor decision making, and a myriad of similarly descriptive words and phrases.

...all while paying themselves world leading airline management salaries and claiming the apocolypse wiill instantly happen if their workers get paid more than 3%...

Full service props up LCC. What are the real figures?
 

Will some one please separate Jetstar accounts from QF.
How is it that QF carries pax from canx due low load JQ services to allow them to operate efficiently. Nothing against JQ but the books are cooked all to often to achieve political agendas. JQ propping up QF my @rse.

The other point, QF engineering carries out full engineering service during every transit with on time performance better than most including the LCC's that have divested themselves of this responsibility.

QF's Melbournes Heavy maintenance average hourly maintenance rate currently sits at less than John Holland and QF's offshoot Forstaff at Avalon. This is with a fully unionised full benefit work force!

Every time QF has haemorrhaged over the last number of years, you can look squarely at the incompetence of management.

Imagine if QF worked with their workforce.

Its a pity the QF bar is being dragged down, not the others pushed up.:ouch:

Hear Hear Rudderless :ok:

I think the accounts are far too heavily entangled for that to happen now, rudderless1.

You'd have to be living under a rock to not know some of the real-life examples of how money is moved between the two airlines, but unfortunately I don't think there is anything illegal going on. "Moral", "ethical", and "misleading" are not terms which are defined in QF Management manuals. The principle measure in the Qantas Group of whether a managerial action is acceptable, is whether the action has a low probability of resulting in a prison sentence.

Qantas shareholders, especially the institutions, don't care about the nitty gritty details or the colour of the tail. It's just the big $ figure at the end.

Although Qantas isn't "too big to fail", it's definitely "too Australian to fail".

A populist bedwetter like Rudd will never let Qantas go under - and most Australian taxpayers would support him, as long as they get a reasonable deal.

History suggests that if the worse were to happen, the Govt would step in and re-nationalise the airline.

In the late 90's the NZ Govt was crowing about how they saved the tax-payer 1 Billion over 10 years by getting rid of the Skyhawk Squadrons. A month later they spent that Billion bailing our ANZ, who I think at the time had SIA as one of their major shareholders!

The Govt, would cetainly step in, it would be suicide for them and they know it. Flogging or closing down QF would be like selling the AFL to the yanks, the NRL to the poms, and the War Memorial to the Japanese, the reaction from the punters would be the same, there are some things in this country that are sacred, and QF is one of them, the govt would be running around like blue ars#d flies trying to find the money and the solution, but let it go, never.

Qantas Yields Collapse
 

For the month of May Qantas Mainline(International) yields have declined have declined by 24%.
The high yield P and J class travellers are just not flying and the seats are being taken up by those wishing to use Frequent Flyer points.
In part this decline has been bought about by the WFC.
Contemplate another cause:Qantas as an Airline is in disarray and travellers are simply avoiding flying with the Red Rat.
Qantas has been cutting away at the product for around 10 years and it has cut too far.The public perception of Qantas is that of a business in decline.
Poor morale,lack of resources,aging aircraft,an IFE that has a high failure rate are all contributing factor.The stoush with Maintenance staff over a 5 % pay increase saw the Qantas Schedule disintegrate.
In short...the Brand has been trashed.
Travellers now have better choices:Emirates and a resurgent Sing Air.
Why would you fly with Qantas?
Nationalistic Pride is no longer a valid reason
10 million Dollars on the Hall of Excellence at Alexandria is indicative of a business that has lost its way
Sixty Seven percent of staff would not recommend Qantas to family and friends as a desirable place of employment.A similar number would not tell people at party that Qantas is where they are employed.
Once employees would wear QF T shirts to a BBQ...not anymore.
Joyce is aware of this.But where does he start?
Big Job.
It may be beyond Joyce and his Chairman.

Hmm i must be in the other 33%.

Maybe the reason it all seems bad is because we are used to having doom and gloom shoved down our throats by Dixon. Well, he's gone, and from what Ive seen the company are trying hard to 're-engage' us. Perhaps less whinging (especially in front of pax) and more positive attitudes would help alter the public perception.

However...what can you do about bad (read: cheapest) IFE? Nothin. I feel for the CC that have to deal with this on a daily basis...:ugh:

:ouch:
Thank God for Government funded life support.

Observation
 

Short Term
Cost cutting,Increased Profit %of market share begins to decline and fleet ages.Overall quality of service begins to decline
Long Term
Yield and profit decline. % market share decline accelerates.Fleet continues to age. Overall service continues to decline markedly.
Surely Dixon was a saboteur

Who Is Happy?
 

Customers? No!
Shareholders?No!
Employees?No!
The perpetrators have all escaped unpunished

i'm happy!
dicko's gone.
gotta feel sorry for tourism oz or whoever he's working for.
look what is happening with inbound tourism into oz in the short time at his new job.

It is possible for a national airline to fail ? Look at Swiss Air and Sabena. Will QANTAS fail ? Probably not, but will things continue in their present form ? I doubt it.

If a company can make enough profits to support gross inefficencies and pay staff well in excess of the work they perform then fine. But eventually someone comes along and spoils the party.

The UK print unions were having a lovely time until the 1980s when the Star newspaper started up with new technology and working practices. A printer on a national newspaper earnt twice as much as an airline first officer, for one or two nights work per week, and could not be sacked.

The United Auto Workers at General Motors were on a good wicket too, until the Japanese and Korean car makers came along.

And who wouldn't want to work for an airline ? Be a unionised baggage handler and earn more than a turbo prop pilot. Be senior cabin crew and collect close to a first officers pay even though you are well past your prime and spend your work hours in the galley complaining about how things aren't what they used to be. Best of all, be a senior Captain on $250 000 with a defined benefit pension doing one or two nice trips per month and reserve the rest of the time, flying < 500 hours per year.

Now we have low cost carriers, non union (except South West), low overheads, efficient (same work with fewer people on less pay in less time), lower terms and conditions while working to max.

In future there will be two choices, low cost - low service or full price - full service. If you want to be the latter your product must justify the extra, and you will have to trim the fat to make difference reasonable. An extra 30 - 40% you can get away with IF you are reliable and give value for the premium. Charge an extra 200 - 300% and the issues with low cost airlines become a lot less important compared to the savings.

A smaller QANTAS with new aircraft on a reduced network with the fat and unsustainable working practices removed could be a serious contender. Singapore Airlines and Cathay are obviously able to justify their prices to those who will pay more for service. Unfortunately these people are heavily outnumbered by those whose only concern is price.

Qantas Myth
 

"pay staff well in excess of the work they perform"
Says who?
This may have been true 20 years but definitely not today.
The average gross pay for an FA is $60K.
The average wage for an Australian is $63K .
Pay increases of 3%p.a(with productivity offsets) is basically keeping pace with CPI and nothing more.
Dixon on the other hand was the highest paid Airline CEO in the world.
Over the last 5 years his renumeration increased by over 400%.
Dixon did a very good job of convincing eveyone that all staff employed by QF were overpaid.
In the lst 5 years Qantas managed to reduce its labour bill by 22%.
Australia is not the third world(yet)but Dixon wanted to pay everybody third world wages.
This vision didnt include Dixon or his trough feeding coterie.
No one on the shop floor at Qantas is overpaid.
The LAMES and pilots hadnt had a pay rise for four years.They were going backwards at a great rate of knots

Quote: "Best of all, be a senior Captain on $250 000 with a defined benefit pension doing one or two nice trips per month and reserve the rest of the time, flying < 500 hours per year." I'd like to know where you thought that doozy up because it just doesn't happen.
Oh. And the new long haul fight attendants are earning around $35,000 per year I believe too.

Some of the staff, not all. Who thinks the baggage handlers are worth what they get for basically unskilled manual labour. Would a similar job in the local council have the same pay and benefits ?

AVERAGE pay, brought down by the lower wages of the new hires. What about the senior boilers, long past it, costing close to a first officer in pay and benefits. Would you they get the same pay in a similar job else where ? As a passenger would you rather be looked after by "Singapore Girl", or a scowling old battle axe who regards you as an inconvenience ?

Anyone think there are too many overpaid managers ?

Engineers however are underpaid considering their skill and responsibilities.

British Airways have them, Ansett had them, sure you haven't got a few ?;)

No one's going to dispute that QF pilots are better paid than J*/Virgin/Tiger ones. If they want to keep it that way they need passengers prepared to pay more for a better travelling experience.