Same goes for BA in the UK and AA or UA in the US. I think probably NZ in NZ too. I guess just a penalty of being the dominant player. I've met Singaporeans who refuse to fly SQ.
At the time of covid, out of QF, VA & NZ, I think QF had the better policy (they would actually refund a cancelled flight if asked), whereas the other two would not - not initially anyway. My memory could fail me, but I definitely recall a lot of noise coming from the other side of the Tasman over their handling of credits.
I had an expensive QF J booking before covid that I was refunded (because I waited for QF to cancel) - a lot of the issues were people not waiting for their flight to be cancelled. I had quite a few QF & JQ bookings made & cancelled during covid that I was refunded for - once you knew how to play the game it was easy. The issue is (not just QF), they didn't make this info freely available. It was often the non-frequent flyers who got burnt.
I don’t disagree for the most part. Most airlines were difficult to deal with during Covid and in some respects, even worse in the recovery. Was Qantas the worst? Probably not.
Qantas’ current position in the firing line is however a result of its own goals. Early on, instead of being transparent, the spin doctors were hard at work, aggressively putting their case that things were fine, when they were not. Too much hyperbole, too little substance, and if wore away at the thin veneer of authenticity and transparency. Simply put, Qantas was no longer perceived as honest.
This transparency was again apparent with the way they’ve fumbled the flight credit numbers. It feeds into the perception that whatever Alan Joyce says cannot be relied upon to be factually accurate, because they hadn’t been.
That’s a big deal for a premium brand. Their operational reliability has been badly tarnished - it masquerades and markets proudly that it’s a premium product - but the reality for many passengers is that it is little better than an LCC.
So, there’s a widening gap in terms of customer expectations and service delivery, compounded by the industry-wide yields that most airlines are enjoying. If fares were cheaper, would there be as much noise? Probably not.
There’s also the issue of some decisions made in the last few years that could be regarded as unethical and out of step with community expectations. They lobbied against VA receiving financial assistance early on in Covid, only to then stick their hand out after they’d folded. Having taken government assistance, they then illegally sacked 1700 workers as part of long-term cost saving ambitions. And it was after these decisions were made that the reliability of their operation started to collapse.
To Joe Public, it looked like management’s greed got in the way of maintaining a sufficient workforce to deliver a competent ground experience. They created a perfect storm for themselves. The white hot anger has been palpable.
Qantas needs to learn to better manage its messaging and what it promises if it wants to rebuild trust. Stopping the spin and focussing on the basics will go a long way in restoring trust and faith. Only then can the brand slowly start to recover.
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www.abc.net.au
. Look at the ABC headlines in the links and then listen to the story with Graham Turner. Both were negative to Qantas.
