And so sayeth someone with a QF managers perspective and absolutely no understanding whatsoever about why or how any of the 'real staff' joined or felt about first working for QF.

And neatly demonstrates why loyal QF staff simply cannot get their point across. Actually believing in something greater than personal greed is so far beyond a vast amount of the population as to be laughable.....

If you mean paycut, all the redundancies were voluntary amongst pilots (mostly Captains), none compulsory, so technically they did take a payout so others could stay in a job.

In 2009 when there was talk of S/O's being made redundant many pilots (mostly S/O's) took reduced hour lines (effective paycuts) in order to save jobs

Yes it is, but with a difference. Page two and I'm still awake! :ok:

An observation: The profit component as a percentage of total revenue, from Singapore Airlines second quarter results in 2013, profit $87 mill, total revenue $3,901 mill = 2.23% profit margin. Slim pickings indeed.

I guess any margin an airline can carve off it's wage bill and other costs will cause a significant bottom line improvement. And a Board should be increasing revenue by growing the business, not competing with itself and undercutting it's fares.

Source: https://www.singaporeair.com/pdf/Inv...r-q2fy1314.pdf

...another Qantas thread
 

Yeah, it is. Read the title, genius. If you don't want to contribute anything meaningful, then stay mute.

Yes, I did mean pay cut, not payout.

The rise of Jetstar, ( or should I call it the Orange cancer?), will continue, because it is cheaper.

Many, many lines have been written here stating that people will pay a premium to fly with Qantas......it just isn't so.

And sadly, while you sit at your computer blaming AJ and the board as the sole reason for Qantas's fall from grace, many people around the world will give you little sympathy until you actually make cuts in your own remuneration.

AJ, and the costs of running a legacy airline whose employees do not embrace the need for change, are the reasons Qantas will fail.

Tallest Poppy, as has been pointed out, QF pilots have taken pay cuts in the past. Post-GFC, a figure of $8M savings from Flt Ops was quoted in order to avoid redundancies. About 250 pilots (and not just the ones under threat) worked reduced lines, and the required savings were achieved. The very next thing that happened was that Dixon was handed $11M for his last 6 months as CEO. :yuk:

Further back, around the time of SARS or 9/11, management requested a pay freeze (effectively a pay cut in real terms), with the promise that 'we'd really appreciate this, and don't worry, you'll be looked after when things pick up'. Well, the pay freeze was duly agreed to, and we all know what happened after that. :yuk:

Your comments about 'being happy to accept the LWOP situation' are just drivel.

Smoke and mirrors
 

This seems to be the case -

And it looks like he stayed!

TallestPoppy
 

Further to your comments re Employees that do not embrace change, one thing that comes to notice with the current situation is that the airline is being run by those who have total disengagement with the workforce, since taking over the Board and AJ's only priority is a return to shareholders at the expense of all else. If you look at other airlines say, ANZ and the then CO one thing they did was to empower their employees with change, that is they were are part of the evolution. Sadly this has not happened at QF with an adversarial Board with little or no interest at what the employee thinks. I have no doubt that if the employees were integral components of the change process they would happily make the necessary sacrifices. AJ, when taking over from GD did say that he would engage with staff however we all no where that has gone.

It seems that Alan Joyce, Strambi, Evans, the demonstrated behaviour of the travelling public and the QF domestic results for the last decade would indicate you're wrong. Quite obviously people actually do pay a premium.

Whether that premium is enough to cover costs or to make an acceptable profit is another discussion entirely but your baseline premise is fundamentally flawed.
Of course, whether they will continue to pay the necessary premium for domestic to remain in profit when there is no difference in product with the retirement of the 767 and the proliferation of 737s on the triangle is also a different discussion but one worth having.

I do like the subsequent straw man of AJ being solely to blame. That's a nice bit of verballing of the staff at Qantas but as ignorant as your comment about people not paying a premium. That you follow it up with yet another one about Qantas staff not 'embracing change' is also great work.

In short, those who know little about the internal workings of Qantas, it's staff and what they have done in the past or have offered to do in the future, should keep their mouths shut lest the demonstrate to all their complete and utter ignorance.

The irony of course is you sitting at your computer blaming people for a multitude of alleged actions that you have no clue about whilst using a 'sitting at your computer' line to peddle a falsehood. You'll need to do better than that champ because those of us at the coal face can see right through you.

Good morning Mr Virginexcess


In my HSC in 1981 I scored a brilliant 23% for economics. So not a genius clearly. You said in an earlier post that with the Qantas international cost base, turning a profit "is just not possible."


But what has changed - its not many years ago that QF, with the same cost base was reporting half billion dollar profits. From the international flights I've been on they seem to be filling seats, particularly to the US. So it doesn't seem to be a competition issue - same cost base, filling seats, but no profits!!! Is it fares have not kept up with inflation, or is it too much loss of revenue and hence a reduction in scale? By that I mean, for instance, QF announced a reduction in off peak Tasman services as a way to save money. Well here's a tip QF, cut all Tasman services and you save 100%. It seems that all they do is cut to save money, but forget that to make money you need revenue.


Just curious to get opinions on what has changed in the last 10 years, besides management, that has sent the balance sheet down the toilet.

Trevor 1. Too much capacity defending the 65% "line in the sand"

2. The focus on product is not what it once was. My last QF flight a few months ago was the "City Flyer"... a clapped out B767 with surly cabin crew (on the day). The next flight on Tigerair was a shiny new Airbus, happy crew and 1/3 the price.

Take a look at the current QF domestic marketing's billboard coming off Southern Cross Drive at Sydney Airport... advertising "free food". Note: to their marketing gurus. The sign frequent flyers would rather see is "B787s on City Flyer services"... I'd give that a go!

Qantas have an outstanding new product in the 787 (that can potentially give them a significant domestic edge over VA), but they treat their customers with contempt by putting it into Jetstar.

Instead Qantas gives its domestic flight meals a fast food style makeover ...McDonalds style meal boxes! Pure genius!!!

Another Angel spotted.

Guys, thanks for the update. I didn't realise some of the actions that had been taken, without joy, by the employees. It is a bit hard to pick ones way through the hatred and vitriol on this forum to find the facts.

Good luck when the latest results announcement is made this week.

G'day Trev
 

I'm not an economist either but I'll have a crack at a few things that I can work out that have changed.

Qantas had a monopoly on outbound traffic across the Pacific. Anecdotally, 25% of their profit came from that route. Subsequently, Virgin offered some competition, which was relatively small, but demonstrated to the public that Qantas was gouging. Qantas had to drop their fares to match Virgins (or thereabouts) resulting in the Pacific no longer being as profitable, or possibly not profitable at all. Add to that the poor choice of aircraft, delayed 787's which ultimately went to J* anyway, inefficient 747's and gas guzzelling 380's whose viability rely heavily on business traffic at a time when business class fares are under downward pressure. All this has resulted in the death of that cash cow.

Domestically they held an effective monopoly after the demise of Ansett. Virgin was not a competitor in the business market, where most of the profits are made, so Qantas had a seemingly endless stream of high yield traffic to fill the coffers from the domestic side and prop up the increasingly unviable international side of the business.

As for the rest of the international side, the demise of Qantas mainline international has broadly coincided with the rise of the middle east and chinese carriers.

15 years ago Emirates had 1 daily 777-200 flight to Melbourne, that was it. Today I think they have around 80 odd services a week to Australia. A large portion of that used to be Qantas passengers.

Add to that, Etihad and Qatar from the middle east, then a few Chinese carriers, Scoot, and Air Asia X, amongst others, and you can see that Qantas has come under extreme pressure to retain market share.

Qantas traded heavily on their safety record. As enviable as it was, it was also a product of a pretty benign flying environment, combined with good maintenance and good training. But as we know, accidents are called accidents for a reason, and eventually everyone has one. Qantas had theirs in Bangkok and it shattered the illusion. That one was particularly damning because it was unequivocally pilot error(albeit with plenty of other contributing factors).

So the Qantas pedestal had been lowered a little.

Following on from that was the A330 dirty dive, the oxgen bottle departure that could have easily been a hull loss, and the QF 32 in Singpaore. The QF 32 was no fault of Qantas and should have restored the status of Qantas pilots as the crew demonstrated the highest levels of professionalism. Unfortunately the 24 hr news cycle doesn't cover that bit too well. As a result of all of the above, Joe public has less reason to choose Qantas, and all the previously mentioned airlines are now viable choices, so price has become much more of a determining factor than it used to be. Qantas used to be able to charge a hefty premium because of its safety record and perceived quality, it no longer has that luxury and has to be more competitive with the new entrant carriers.

As more and more people chose to fly on other airlines based on price, word starts to get out that these cheaper airlines are actually OK, and in the case of some, like Emirates, actually provide a vastly superior product. Word of mouth spreads and more people are happy to fly on an Arabic or Chinese airline, putting more downward pressure on Qantas passenger numbers and revenue.

As Qantas revenue drops, they still have the same infrastructure to support, much of which was created during the good times when the business (like many others) became fat and lazy. Their fixed costs, many of which were created during the good times, are now a weight around their neck, this includes wages.

Then Virgin morphs from an LCC to a full service carrier that is a genuine competitor to Qantas in the domestic market. Not just in the low end of the market, but importantly in the high yield business sector. Because of Qantas reputation, frequency, and frequent flyer points, the drift of business passengers from Qantas to Virgin is not massive, probably in the order of 15-20%, but critically the competition from Virgin has put enormous downward pressure on the price of business fares. So even though Qantas has maintained a fair amount of its business customers, they are all paying much less for their tickets, so revenue is down even further, but the infrastructure, fixed and variable costs are still high.

Add to this, pre GFC the Australian economy was thriving off the back of the mining boom. Those riches flowed to all areas of the economy and punters were spending with gay abandon. Then came the GFC which was a big reality check on everyone, followed closely by the end of the mining investment boom. Both private and corporate travel reduced as a result. Right on the heels of this came Borghetti and the transformation of Virgin.

As Virgins offer improved, so did load factors, requiring Virgin to add more capacity to cope with the increased demand. As this was happening, Alan Joyce steadfastly committed to maintaining his 65% capacity line in the sand. So what this meant was that for every 1 aircraft Virgin added to meet demand, Joyce added 2 into a business that had declining demand. The result has been massive over capacity, more so for Qantas than Virgin. Further downward pressure on yield and revenue.

One can only assume that Joyce thought that Virgin would run out of cash before he did. On face valued that was probably a reasonable expectation if he thought that Borghetti would not be able to find additional cash. Then came the cash injection from Etihad that resulted in AJ going nuclear and forecasting the collapse of Qantas.

It would appear now that Qantas has accepted that Virgin is not going to run out of cash, so rather than try and outlast Borghetti in a war of attrition, it would appear that he has retreated from his 65% line in the sand and is now attempting to try and run the business the way any business needs to be run. And that is get your costs under control and do what you can to increase revenue.

So to answer your question in short, what has changed is that Qantas share of the market and probably revenue has dropped substantially but the cost base has not kept pace.

There is no doubt in my mind that at least some of the loss of market share is a result of some poor management decisions, but a lot has been from things outside the control of management, such as Virgins reinvention, the GFC, increasing access to foreign carriers etc.

Whether Joyce's venture into Asia was folly or not, it would appear to me it needed to be tried. In the face of ever increasing competition in an Australian market that offers no opportunity for growth, and being under increasing attack from foreign carriers on the International front, there is a certain logic to looking at markets that are not as developed as Australia in countries with growing economies to try and exploit the first mover advantage.

The other argument of course is that he should have stuck to his knitting and just continued to be good at what Qantas did, which was provide a good product that Australians loved.
Having dropped the ball on that though, I doubt that it can ever be recovered. Certainly not in time to save the business from where it currently sits.

Given that, in my opinion, I don't see any quick way to increase revenue either domestically or internationally, in the face of ever increasing competition, of the things the Company can control, the fastest way to reduce the flow of red ink is by cutting costs, which he is doing on a grand scale.

There is no doubt J* has taken a lot of revenue from Qantas, but I think that horse has bolted. Even if J* was shut down tomorrow, most of those passengers will not go back to paying the old exorbitant Qantas fares. They fly J* (mostly) because they like the price, not the product.

For Qantas to prosper it needs to find out what its market is and tailor itself to suit in both size and service. At the moment it is too big and too expensive. Before anyone jumps down my throat at the too expensive comment, it is inextricably tied to the size. There is a point where capacity and load factor allow reasonable prices to be charged. As soon as the capacity in Australia allows fares to recover to a reasonable level, both Virgin and Qantas will return to profitability. Cost cutting will not save either of these airlines, it will just change the date at which they return to profit (or go broke). That's assuming at some point in the future the two CEO's return to a rational approach to business.

My two bobs worth.

Hard hat on. Preparing for incoming.:eek:

Why? I thought you made many good points worth considering.


Excellent summary of the situation, this has been my thinking for quite some time

Virgins "reinvention" was actually within QF management's control - it was their idea. This was actually Qantas's strategy, to force Virgin upmarket, and with it their cost base would increase disproportionately. It was described as a "pincer" move, undercut them with J*, screw them through QF Dom, forcing Virgin to either lower cost base, or increase it significantly.

This has a big influence on your argument domesticly, as quite a bit of your logic turns on most things being beyond managements control, particularity competitor behaviour.

The International arguments I will leave to someone else.

Interesting Point.

One of the reasons Virgin chose to go upmarket instead of downmarket was that the low end (leisure travel) is too sensitive to the economy, whereas business is far less so. Given that J* is clearly mining for the lower end, I wonder how they balance their exposure to the cyclical nature of leisure travel.

Perhaps it is as many have said on these threads, that it is subsidised by the parent to disguise the reality.

The above got me thinking. If it is bye bye QANTAS, Jetstar should have to pay their own:
1. Fuel, including associated costs for an increase in staff numbers in 'their' fuel department as the corresponding fuel department numbers at QF decrease.
2. Air navigation / airport charges including associated costs for an increase in staff numbers in 'their' staff numbers that work on such charges as the corresponding department numbers at QF decrease.
3. As above and all other areas such as reservation staff, check in staff, baggage handling, accounting, IT, marketing, catering, engineering (sorry they are no longer needed at JQ are they?) etc as the QF numbers decrease.
Then there's the 'new' lounges to reflect that they are Jetstar and hence, massive savings for QF as they close their lounges.

All of a sudden, the JQ costs rise and the QF costs drop but we all know it won't work like that.

Another thing that we at home have just found recently is comparing JQ to VA on flights to PPP for 'schoolies'. Son is going up with the son of a QF staff member. We have purchased VA flights for our son and his mate has told him that the JQ flights have plenty of seats. I had a look just yesterday and the flight out of PPP to BNE on the VA site stated 'only 2 seats left, apparently the JQ flight on the same day has 66. Indicates to me that many parents and kids I assume much prefer VA over JQ. We won't ever know but I would say that if it was only QF flying to Phuket, Denpasar and Honolulu to name just 3 and not JQ, the flights would be chockers. Wait a minute, wouldn't plenty of you staff be able to advise if it is hard to get on the QF flights to HNL say in school holidays and that there are perhaps seats available on JQ?

You can't get a staff travel seat to or from HNL out of Sydney most days we operate hence the increase in services just announced.

School holidays ? Not a chance in hell.

They are probably suggesting 2 seats left at that price

I dunno, but you would have to be the dumbest C U Next Tuesday on the face of the planet as a westerner to think you could compete with an Asian on a low cost basis in any industry.

Folks, let me introduce you to the biggest killer of businesses on the planet; profitless growth.

Qantas, aka Jetstar has a very bad case of this disease.

Conventional wisdom is that the seat flies whether the aircraft is empty or full and if you can sell that empty seat for one dollar, even one cent , you are making more money.

However there is a countervailing argument in my opinion; the value proposition. This basically states that if your product is ****, then it doesn't matter how little you charge for it, people will buy something else which they perceive to be better value for money even if it is more expensive.

For example, Coles supermarket sells potatoes pretty cheap, but when you get the bag home and open it, you find they are all Second or Third grade and require a lot of peeling to remove the cracks and blemishes - not a good value proposition at all compared to buying first grade unblemished potatoes from your local specialist. Similarly with bread, meat and a lot of other products.

My contention after flying Qantas domestic and Jetstar is that Jetstar is a poor value proposition. Furthermore, catering for Bogans permanently consigns you to thin margins - profitless growth.

The smart money these days in marketing is not into discovering how many customers you can attract by charging less, it is the reverse: discovering how much premium a customer is willing to pay for what you can offer. This is why Melbourne's coffee shops have these simply insanely large menus; they are trying to discover exactly how much a customer will pay for a coffee that is precisely to their taste.

Airlines like ANZ have understood this, they offer meal options, drink options, bag options, seat options. They on sell accommodation, tourism, car hire, etc. automatically. Qantas domestic and international is able to do the same if it keeps its staff, anyone remember the 1970's "fading blue denim" section on the Kangaroo route? What does Jetstar do? One size fits all! Prices are down and staying down!

Then of course there is the opportunity cost argument; time is not free. What else could management and staff be doing that would earn more money for the business than engaging in profitless growth? When I ran an OEM manufacturing business I had a lot of customers who turned out to be cheapskates and general pains in the backside, my good customers I hung onto like grim death. The cheapskates I deliberately got rid of by overpricing and then recommending them take their business to my competitors - that left me with spare capacity to go looking for more good customers, and over time build up a stable of clients who were prepared to pay a good price for a superior product.. What is Jetstar doing? Filling it's aircraft with cheapskates.

Jetstar thinks that price and market share will protect it and to some extent they are right, but meanwhile they will leak any and every customer that can afford to pay a little more to other airlines, leaving Jetstar with the Bogans because they are trying to discover how little a customer will pay, not how much he will pay - profitless growth. Furthermore, when the economy turns down further, the bogans won't fly at all.

Standard Unit, what about seats on JQ to HNL?

Ken Borough, yes you are correct however, there was only 1 fare type displayed, the others were greyed out.

I think it's not only funny, but just plain ignorant to assume Jetstar fly only bogans around, as Sunfish suggests.

Far from it. Get your ignorant, grossly over assuming head out of the sand. Do you think business is keen to splash out and pay more for a ticket for a perceived better product? I think you will find, most businesses count every cent, especially post GFC.

Yeah right. If that's the case, why do Jetstar management always travel at the pointy end of QF aircraft?

If it's only a "perceived" better product, you would think that a Jetstar manager would be able to see through that perception. So why don't they use their own product if it's just as good?

Also if "most businesses count every cent, especially post GFC", and in a year when yields in the leisure market are under pressure wouldn't it be better for Jetstar's bottom line if Jetstar managers (and other duty staff for that matter) passengered on their own aircraft, rather than pay QF for a J class seat?

That is, assuming they pay QF anything at all.

Just because Qantas has a business class doesn't indicate all the passengers are 'business class'. Likewise all-economy Jetstar doesn't make everyone a bogan. The suits and bogans are spread between both!

It's not just the Jq management that utilise Qf biz class. The Thai based Jq flt attendants are constantly paxed around the network in Qf biz class.
I highly doubt Jq pay for any of those costs for staff or duty travel.
Cost shifting at it's best and hurting the qf bottom-line, especially internationally.

I just did Austrailia-Japan-Australia with my family. Northbound sector was with Jetstar and we came home on QF 22 with Qantas. Overall, each product was satisfactory with the following observations:

Jetstar.
A330 aircraft. New and smelled nice. Crew were mostly foreigners based in Singapore. The Purser/Cabin leader was an Aussie girl about 25 years old and did at no stage look or sound comfortable with what she was doing. We had pre-paid for meals and got a standard airline economy class slop in a plastic tray followed by a 'vegetable curry roll' later in flight. After meals were provided, the cabin crew all managed to make themselves totally invisible except for a couple of forays into the cabin to sell duty-free items. Having said that, all interaction with CC found them to be cheery and friendly. PA from the FO sounded like he he could probably read and write as well as talk.

Of note that when we had checked in for the flight to Japan, J* staff told us that the airline had been trying to contact us to tell us that we had been re-booked to depart in another 2 days. We said that we had not heard from them and that this would be a huge inconvenience. A supervisor arrived and determined that no emails had been sent and that there was a note to say that when Jetstar had called, they didn't leave a message and would try call us again later, which they didn't do. The supervisor made some calls to a higher up and pointed out that the airline had failed to inform us of the change. After some firm argument from her, she managed to convince whoever she was talking to that we should travel which we did. We thank her for her efforts and professionalism.

Qantas. (Southbound).
Old B744 aircraft. Interior was clean but the interior was so dated, that the signage was written in hieroglyphics. Cabin crew could only be described in these terms: professional, friendly, slick, confidence inspiring. Captain made the usual PAs and sounded like an articulate industry veteran. It was a great relief that he could provide flight details and avoid the dull and hackneyed "sit back, relax and enjoy the flight" (which makes me cringe every time that I hear it).

Economy class food was not the Rockpool level, but was ok. I didn't eat the white suff with yellow fruity looking thing on the top that was apparently 'dessert' but the Roast Pork main was fine as was the Sav Blanc served by the friendly and helpful CC named John. In-flight entertainment was not as user friendly as on Virgin B777 and had less movies but was ok. Drinks were served at regular intervals and we were happy.

The price for each sector was pretty much the same, Southbound with QF a little cheaper. In their own way, the product by each carrier was fine.

Well, if that is the case, they are failing badly. No dividends for years and share price in the toilet. Neither of these constitute a return to shareholders.

Quoted from Anthill

Nice to read. Qantas are a class act in the cabin, I simply don't get all the comments about surly staff and poor service. They are far superior to the Air NZ product (which is still generally adequate) but also compare very favorably to their Jetconnect cousins, another area where they often receive unfavorable (and unfair) comparison. The food in the economy cabin is excellent (although Air NZ has the wood on them in J). I really hope they find a way out of the current crisis, it would be a sad day without them.

Jetstar to replace Qantas? Here's why that's absurd
 

When Qantas invented Jetstar a decade ago, it aimed to be everything Qantas wasn’t: a no-frills way to move people with dirt cheap fares and, it was hoped, handsome profits.

So basic was the model pursued by Qantas boss Geoff Dixon and the executive he eventually appointed to run Jetstar, Alan Joyce, that it did not even pursue any style of customer service apart from having the minimum number of flight attendants permissible for the purpose of staffing the exits and the food trolleys.

That was in stark contrast to the world’s biggest low-cost carrier Southwest Airlines, which is now America’s biggest domestic airline of any type on the back of its quirky, cheery in-flight service.

In fact, when Sir Richard Branson was setting up Virgin Blue in Australia in 2000, he thought so much of the Southwest style that he ripped it off Down Under and the remnants of it are still apparent in Virgin Australia’s customer service.

Jetstar’s no-service model has performed exactly as intended, until recently, delivering steady annual profits. The recent slide into losses has been suffered by all four domestic airline brands as a result of too many seats chasing too few bottoms – “overcapacity”, using the trade lingo – and a soft Australian economy, which has reduced discretionary consumer spending.

But, for almost its entire life, there has been a subterranean “fear” fanned by Qantas unions and others, that the “real” agenda is to replace Qantas with Jetstar.

And almost every year, in the lead-up to the airlines’ annual meetings, crackpot stories like Jetstar becoming Australia’s main international airline get a run.

Suggestions that Jetstar “is set to become Australia’s main international carrier” are absurd.

So is the idea that further cuts at Qantas’s international arm will more than halve Qantas’s overall size, which is necessary to realise the above doomsday forecast.

It IS quite true that, since 2008, Qantas international has been slashed, led by the axing of three of the airline’s five daily services to Europe – the Bangkok to London and Hong Kong to London flights in 2012, and Singapore to Frankfurt last year, leaving just two services – one from Melbourne, the other from Sydney, via Dubai.

And Qantas International, which is hemorrhaging cash when only six years ago it was earning record profits, will be targeted for further savings in the next three years.

That will include measures as simple as changes in schedule. “Fleet and network adjustments are earmarked to save up to $600 million over three years for the Qantas Group from the overall $2 billion cost reduction target that is at the centre of the airline’s turnaround plans,” the airline said on Friday.

That was part of an announcement of an increase in Qantas international services to North and South America, which includes the rescheduling of Sydney-Los Angeles flights with a morning and evening service to better suit business travellers, and the introduction of three extra evening non-stop services per week from Melbourne to Los Angeles.

This coincides with United Airlines’ decision to resume Melbourne-Los Angeles non-stops with its new Boeing 787 Dreamliners from October, and Virgin Australia’s decision to axe Melbourne-Los Angeles and beef up Brisbane-Los Angeles to daily.

Qantas 747 non-stop services from Sydney to Santiago, Chile, will increase from three to four per week and the daily Sydney-Dallas service will switch to A380s non-stop in both direction six days a week from next month.

The idea that Jetstar would become Australia’s main overseas airline is fanciful. Yes, Qantas’s once-dominant position has been reduced from more than 40 per cent two decades ago to less than 20 per cent.

But its 16.6 per cent market share among carriers flying into and out of Australia is still by far the largest and dwarfs Jetstar’s 7.7 per cent – which, incidentally, is the same as Virgin Australia’s international market share with its flights from Sydney and Brisbane to Los Angeles and Sydney to Abu Dhabi.

After Qantas, the next-largest international carrier to Australia is Emirates with just 9.5 per cent, followed by Singapore Airlines with 8.8 per cent.

Just as ludicrous is the idea that Jetstar would get all Qantas’s passengers if Qantas international shut down. If that doomsday scenario ever occurred, the beneficiaries would be Qantas’s competitors like Emirates and Singapore Airlines, not Jetstar.

In 2009, Qantas spent $10 million on a “centre of excellence” in Sydney to train and retrain flight attendants in the art of customer service and now claims its “net promoter score” among customers – the measurement now widely used in the marketing industry – is higher than it has ever been.

The next chapter in the Qantas saga will be the eagerly anticipated Qantas annual meeting on Thursday, closely followed by Virgin Australia’s AGM on Friday.

The results of both will be of more than passing interest to customers of both airlines.

Bad Adventures....AGM 24th of October...This Thursday is the announcement of the results.:ok:

Which were basically paid for out of Qantas coffers.... Not a particularly sound argument as there has never been anything concrete provided to support it. Frankly, I see that claim as wild exaggeration at best and a blatant lie of criminal proportions at worst.

The job of anyone in business is to work how much they can sell something for, not work out how to give it away for less. None of these guys have ever run their own business or they wouldn't have thrown billions away like confetti. They are incompetent, shameless and lie as a matter of course.

Anthill

I think your post sums up precisely what is wrong with the Qantas Group.

You said the return fare on QF22 was actually less than the JQ flight to Japan.

Group marketing is a total shambles. Where the two airlines share common routes they are being promoted as interchangeable and expect the punter to accept that, while on the other hand selling JQ as a bottom feeder product. Sometimes the turd polish rubs off.

This is also happening domestically.

Getting back to international for a moment, I am constantly getting emails from some of the travel websites promoting fares on QF to HKG for return fares of AUD 690 or thereabouts. They are doing themselves no favours by downgrading the value of their own product while crying that they cannot get a premium.

All the economic arguments about cost do not wash with me for the very simple reason that QF management has destroyed the network. QF has less flights out of Australia each week than many of the foreign competitors, including my own company. They are trying to spread fixed overheads over a depleted network and then trying to blame it on unit costs.

As many have said on this thread, it's a tough gig out there in aviation land and to survive you can never shrink your way to profitability. Margins are razor thin so you have to have minimum critical mass and provide the travelling public with a network they can use, and on a/c that can make a dollar for you. Pilots' salaries are a miniscule portion of the overall equation.

You most definitely cannot survive by charging equivalent or less than your LCC bastard brother (who is leeching off all your so-called legacy costs).

Bad Adventures....AGM 24th of October...This Thursday is the announcement of the results.

Don't tell me, tell Clive Dorman, he wrote the article. :ok:

Yet Qantas has paid $0 dividends since 2009? And its share price has dropped from $6 to barely over $1 over the same time frame.

Investors Dividend History | Qantas

Can't use that as an excuse for what he's done. Shareholders must be LIVID!

What is a Bogan?

Same as a Westie or a Bevan :ok:

Sorry as a thick Pom never heard of those two either!!