QANTAS, it gets better.
 

https://michaelwest.com.au/wing-crac...ef-alan-joyce/


For long-suffering Qantas customers this raises the spectre of further chaos over the Christmas travel season. The airline is already struggling to deliver capacity on the most lucrative routes, desperately recruiting pilots, pulling training pilots out of retirement and engaged in an escalating industrial dispute with its dramatically constrained engineering division. It is even mulling leasing foreign aircraft and pilots to fill its capacity problems inflicted by management decisions.

Questions were put to Qantas public relations division for this story. As yet, no response has been forthcoming.

The unscheduled maintenance for the A380s – which is 50 days for each aircraft – and that will be conducted with a team from Airbus, threatens to exacerbate capacity constraints in Qantas international. Its post-Covid plans have already been stymied by the delayed delivery of new Boeing 787’s and the airline’s customers may find themselves flying on foreign owned and crewed 787s over Christmas, something insiders describe as “a new low” under Joyce’s management.

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Thanks Icarus

Old news, this was done in the 1980s for similar reasons.
Qantas was government owned then.
The children who write the online fish wraps and start the threads and are alleged insiders leaking out, should do a bit of homework before they get tooo excited.

I think the point is that none of this would have happened if QF focused on running an airline rather than focusing on screwing the humans that make the airline work, both passengers and staff. Management saw this coming but let their egos stop them from changing their focus.

Emirates, Singapore, Qatar, Etihad, BA, LH, Korean all have the same or more A380s as Qantas but somehow the article leads us to believe this is almost all AJ’s fault and a QF specific problem. The fact EK and SQ with their 120 and 24 A380s will be more substantially affected is barely mentioned. I’d argue proportionally this would affect EK the most, but MWM is on a bit of a vendetta against QF at the moment so anything like that will be blown out of proportion. Just like the upcoming Dnata strike action, from media headlines you’d think it’s solely QF ground staff performing strikes, only QF services being affected and more “Chaos for QF”. But they service most international carriers (owned by EK).

You can do a Google News search for articles relating to the 2019 AD, you’ll see back then the focus on the articles was on Airbus as a manufacturer and the aircraft itself, QF only rated a mention in these articles as an affected airline, unlike the MWM article where it’s now seemingly all their fault.

The AD extends the inspection area from 2019 and brings the time interval forward a bit. It’s not as if the entire fleet needs to be imminently grounded.

Half of QF A380s were inspected in 2019, it would been more disruptive to the schedule then to take them out of service for the inspections than now when most are in the process of slowly being re-activated, with crew re-training being the biggest obstacle to bringing them back sooner.

Or, shock horror, history repeats? Ie haven’t learned previous mistakes?

Either way, QF is now one of the bottom barrel products out there.

accountants cannot run airlines. Consistently skimming off the top has lead all Qantas group airlines to the bottom - What an embarrassment.

The data tends to contradict that contention.

Anyone can run an airline, whether the airline progresses successfully is another question. Running an airline in a low competitive environment where cost control vs a captive market interact is not hard. Add competitive elements and the task gradually gets harder and a pure numbers man is going to have problems as the elements that attract and keep regular clientele requires spending. The 'accountant' type axe wielding CEO has been the go to for the last 40 years mainly as we are talking about existing companies that require trimming to be competitive vs new lean competition. But too much focus on cost and not enough on product will inevitably make you vulnerable to loss of customers to try competition, especially if it undercuts you. Then the cost driven entities compete on cost alone until something breaks, and the whole industry spirals into oblivion. This was a major issue in GA, especially in flying training, no one stood out as 'better' so the consumer decision comes down almost purely to cost, undercutting and eventually a non viable industry that is just the next moron with cash thinking they can do it 'cheaper'.

If you look at simple cons business use to bamboozle the consumer, look at petrol prices, it constantly bounces up and down, so that each station is not actually competing at all, as the consumer has no idea what the actual price is, then loyalty programs, ie pay 10cpl more with us, but we give you 4cpl back, what a deal. All to pay for the same thing that you can get at any pump and probably 10-20cpl cheaper down the road if you did some simple investigations. Airlines have used the seat space tools, loyalty programs and other marketing tweaks, but really its now coming down to price in an accelerating cost market.

Point is QF has cut the fat out and is into the bone that gels the premium customers to the business, as long as the market remains saturated they will kick along, but if this downturn gets nasty they may find themselves in a spot of bother as the product is no longer a step above the competition.

This started 15 years ago. My brother, who travelled from Melbourne to Beijing 12 or 15 times per year in Business Class on Qantas, moved to Singapore Airlines. In his words, "I stopped flying Qantas when I could see Geoff Dixon's cost cutting before my eyes."

I suspect there are many once bolted-on Qantas high value Frequent Flyers who are now doing the same. It will be very difficult for Qantas to get them back.

While all the “fat cutting” happened CEOs and senior management met their KPIs and were handsomely rewarded with 7 figure bonuses.
The airline lurched and bumbled along mainly through its own momentum. Then along came Covid, a once in a lifetime crisis / opportunity for management to exploit. And exploit it to the full, they did.

And then when the cracks first began to occur, the CEO living in some Bollinger soaked alternate universe blamed passengers for not being match fit. Truly away with the fairies.

I believe AJ may have miss timed his exit. Late 2021 would have worked so much better for him.

Post of the year:D
CC

Joyce is living in cloud cuckoo land. Blaming the pax?? What exactly did he mean by passengers not being ‘match fit’ anyway? Should a passenger carry an additional suitcase and an extra months worth of medication just in case his airline loses their baggage? Should passengers travel with tents and sleeping bags in case an aircraft is grounded in an outback location with engineering issues? Should a disabled passenger have their wheelchair made from titanium just in case the ground handlers drop it on the tarmac? I mean seriously, the bloke is full of piss and wind blaming the pax for all of the Qantas woes. Not an ounce of humility and not a single mention of executive management accountability.

It’s now so very obvious that all of the cuts, downsizing, and scaling back done under Joyce’s tenure has boiled over. COVID is only one part of the causal chain, the rest of their issues can be attributed to the incompetents at the top cutting way too deep. Joyce has slammed Qantas with lean six sigma on steroids and the result is a hollowed out shell of an airline. And with a neutered Board too scared to cut this little worm free, they too should be held to account. Qantas may have a respectable share price, but at what cost?

Events such as QF is facing (and a lot of others) reminds me of a story given at some lecture many, many years ago. Steelworks in Pittsburg family owned was facing tough times, agreement made was all would cut back their hours, no one let go, as production dropped so did the commensurate hours put in by each of the work force, pay cheque declined naturally, but each was getting by, things eventually returned to normal and the owner had earned the undying loyalty of his work force.

Herb Kelleher, co founder of Southwest, from reading seemed to have had a similar loyalty from his work force.

Any business is a triumvirate, investors, management and those at the coal face. In fact all three are investors, those with cash, those with management talent, and those at the coal face with the necessary skills (check in, IT, engineer, pilot, CC, baggage handler, tug driver etc etc). Only two on that triangle seem to be acknowledged as having any investment in a businesses success if the financial pages are a guide.

Maybe QF should have taken a leaf from Ken Grenda, of Grenda Bus Corporation in Melbourne. When he sold the family business to Venture he gifted the staff a pool of $16 million to say thanks. The money was distributed based on time in service with some employees getting $100,000. Some staff members having 40-50 years at the company. The company was bought as a going concern, so these were not redundancy payments, just thanks.Unfortunately in aviation the quote would probably be more along "A business is only as good as it's CEO and employees are a cost to be smashed down to minimums"

If the Wright brothers were alive today Wilbur would have to fire Orville to reduce costs

Well, to be fair to Wilbur, Orville did crash eight times, didn't he? A morning tea with the Chief Pilot might have been in order.

Today, Orville would likely get a guided tour through mahogany row and promotion to management pilot.

AJ is in a hot air balloon and realised he was lost. He reduced altitude and spotted a woman below. He descended a bit more and shouted, "Excuse me, can you help? I promised a friend I would meet him an hour ago, but I don't know where I am."
The woman below replied, "You are in a hot air balloon hovering approximately 30 feet above the ground. You are between 33 and 34 degrees south latitude and between 151 and 152 degrees east longitude."
"You must be an engineer," said the balloonist.
"I am," replied the woman. "How did you know?"
"Well," answered the balloonist, "everything you told me is, technically correct, but I have no idea what to make of your information, and the fact is I am still lost. Frankly, you've not been much help so far."
The woman below responded, "You must be an executive manager."
"I am," AJ replied, "but how did you know?"
"Well," said the woman, "you don't know where you are or where you are going. You have risen to where you are, due to a large quantity of hot air. You made a promise, which you have no idea how to keep, and you expect people beneath you to solve your problems. The fact is you are in exactly the same position you were in before we met, but now, somehow, it's my fault."

Another casual 5.5 million for AJ.

https://www.smh.com.au/business/comp...09-p5bgrg.html

Check out the bonus schedule. AFR are reporting he will clean up to the tune of $13 000 000 next year if it all goes to plan

He will likely depart the business having pulled in at least $150m. Goyder will be out batting for him though. Nobody is worth that much. What did they say, these executive salaries and bonuses are all ‘market rates’.

Benchmarking.

Benchmark staff salaries to Bangladesh and India. Our costs are too high.

Benchmark executive salaries to New York and London. We have to attract the best and brightest.

Surprised this has flown under the radar:

Dnata ground handlers have called off next week’s 24-hour strike after securing an immediate 12.6 per cent pay rise.

The TWU said the deal also stopped “attempts to scale back overtime entitlements” and would amount to a 17 per cent pay increase over four years.

Qantas Strike Off as Ground Handlers Strike Deal

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/sep/07/qantas-complaints-under-investigation-as-accc-says-airline-not-realistic-about-flights-it-could-serve

https://9now.nine.com.au/a-current-affair/qantas-statement-about-flight-credits-covid-disruption/6df159d6-d8e7-4815-93fa-de8200ca306a

I think Qantas strategy may now be on the right track: https://www.theshovel.com.au/2022/06...BKByqmm5ZHzKpg

Theres 1 person who wont like reading this & of course thats AJ.
It wont suit his rhetoric about wage freezes & 2% pay rises.
Well done to the Dnata staff who have suffered a lot during the covid shutdown.

Thats chump change. He just gave himself 15% in one year. Thank you 'our people'

It may be a separate company but Dnata’s biggest Australian customer would’ve had a say in how much they were willing to pay staff. At the end of the day the costs of a pay rise are passed onto the customer, that being the airline.

It also can be used as leverage for permanent staff in negotiations, if the contractors are getting way more than a freeze then why not them?

It was noted that Qantas Pravda this week loudly proclaimed that the strikes had been called off, but conveniently failed to mention the reason why.
They must seriously think their dribble is the only the source of news for most employees.

What amazes me is that I have been managing people for 30+ years, different cultures, norms and in different countries. I've never had anyone complain that they'd been screwed, I never ran my department anything other than under budget, unless there was an explainable blow-out (additional flights not originally planned that did not leave time to recruit additional resources) and no one ever said they were poorly treated, screwed or were not paid everything they were entitled to be paid. In the last company I worked for, an off-the-cuff remark was made by someone from a different department that "most people here want to work in your department" - "Why??" I asked. "Because your staff respect you".

This is reinforced when you bump into people you've managed years before and they say what a great manager you were, certainly better than the standard today.

Not sharing this to blow my own trumpet, but to simply illustrate - this is NOT rocket science. It's not hard to manage a business well and some departments within airlines are multiple times bigger than most small to medium businesses, it just takes common sense, logic and a modicum of respect for the people working for you. Not clever game-playing and strategising and spouting management-speak, weasel word piffle, that spews out of management's mouths today. I banned that sort of nonsense in my various positions, I would actually say to other managers "If you're going to spout that reaching out, going forward, cohort, what that looks like, lean in bull**** then the conversation's over. Speak plain English."

You Said one word in your post that really resonates with me. We can talk about money, Perks, work environment etc all we like but the biggest thing that I feel has killed staff morale in Australias airlines is "respect." (Or lack thereof). There is no respect or care for staff and there is no respect or care for passengers. I've never seen it this bad nor do I see any end in sight. I'm worried this will become the new normal. If it does, I don't see how this career is sustainable in the long term.
I don't like people who make big deals out of things and constantly scream the sky is falling in. But I feel the pressure valve is very close to giving way.

I see JQ is in fine form again: (sorry that it's ACA but you get the idea) Is it just me or is the current strategy simply to keep quiet and people/ the media will forget and talk about something else soon.

But the fact is that, at least for the time being, there are more than enough people willing to pay in advance and line up for this kind of treatment. (Hence the word "sheeple" was coined.)

My guess is that the strategy of the bean counters is that when they finally rebuild some semblance of the capability they destroyed, there won't be enough people who've sworn never to fly on their airline again to make a difference to the bottom line.

It's not as if the people have much choice LB, the term "sheeple" is unfortunately a term of disrespect and I would hope it's not how crews view their pax/guests/clients/customers, or whatever the current "in" word is.

Its not crews that you have to worry about Megan. Its the management class that sets the tone. At the front line its all too apparent just how many hopes and expectations get dashed every day. And no one that I work with is happy about it or proud of it. In fact I am back to claiming to play piano in a whorehouse rather than admit to working for QF.

Of course they have a choice! Who’s holding a gun to their head saying: “You must fly to Bali” or wherever? And how can a flight be ‘necessary’ if it’s cancelled?

And I have no doubt that sensible crews do not view the majority of PAX as “sheeples” (though I’m sure some crews would prefer that some bogans stayed at home).

I’m referring to the beancounters’ attitude. If people continue to be willing to pay in advance to line up like sheep to have their bags lost and flights cancelled, why would the beancounters have any different attitude? The problem is that the sheep aren’t ‘match fit’.

But I might be going to my daughters wedding, or to her death bed, not necessary in absolute terms, but hell, it'd sure be nice.Few more laps of the paddock do it?

Then pay for a ticket, join the queue and take your chances. The beancounters are banking on it.

You've got me thinking is aviation necessary at all? Come to think of it, not much is necessary aka Aborigines ;)