AirlineRatings Article - "The real story behind the lynching of Qantas"

[encryptededdy]

https://www.airlineratings.com/news/the-real-story-behind-the-lynching-of-qantas/

Certainly not the first website I'd go to for aviation news, however I think this is a (mostly) reasonable take on Qantas' issues in the media as of late.

My personal opinion on this article is that whilst it makes some decent points, it ignores the fact that a lot of the Qantas issues that has resulted in negative press coverage have been more or less own goals from management failures.

For instance - the continuous flight credit drama that's been in the media for over a year. Own goal from not investing in IT to make self-service actually work plus desire to hold onto cash, and in the end was pressured to offer refunds anyway.

Call centre drama - during COVID, mostly caused by the above inability to self-service flight credits/changes/cancellations, resulting in massive call volumes. New inexperienced call centres also caused a variety of other issues for customers, which from time to time ended up in the press (e.g. customer can't fly because not ticketed because call center messed up the booking when trying to change)

The selling of cancelled flights? Most likely an IT own-goal since they needed manual processing to pull the flights from sale, which wasn't done in time.

Other than the (illegal) sacking of baggage handlers which for better or worse achieved Qantas' goal (even if they copped bad PR and financial penalties from it), everything else seems to have not saved Qantas any money whilst simultaneously making a negative dent to their public image. That seems like poor management decision making to me.

 

[elanshin]

I definitely agree that whilst many criticisms of Qantas is warranted and there are definitely issues they need to work through big and small, after a little while it became just a case of "Qantas Bad", news sell, milk it some more.

In some respects though, this may have been a good wake up slap in the face to Qantas however. There may be a bunch of things they will now consider and change that they probably wouldn't have even thought about 12 months ago.

Also all this bad airlines press might hopefully lead to some more government regulations.

Also, it would appear that the media has caught wind that "Virgin Bad" is now starting to gather momentum. I'm seeing a few more articles and reports of Virgin issues now.

 

[RooFlyer]

Geoffrey Thomas is a well known Qantas apologist. Nothing to see here …. move on.

 

[A220HubAndSpoke]

ah so THAT'S why we all hate Qantas. I never really got the hate for him before.

What a terrible article. Geoffrey Thomas seems to think people hate Qantas because they heard about this story about some rando losing their luggage, not that people have actually lost their luggage

 

[TiredOldFlyer]

Any mention in the book about the share deal by AJ and the investigation by the ACC ?
Maybe saving it for the sequel.

 

[Mickey Mouse]

Haven't (and wont) read any "article" at that joke of a site, however, it might be interesting what his take on the illegal baggage-handler episode is, given his only connection to aviation (aside from paid puff pieces) was as a baggage chucker decades ago!

Always (self-)billed as "aviation expert", but the least credible man on the planet!

 

[Happy Trails]

I wonder if he wrote it in the Chairman's Lounge.

 

[Mickey Mouse]

I wonder if he wrote it in the Chairman's Lounge.

He always bleated that he'd never been granted that privilege.
About the only thing I believed (lowering the tone, don't you know)

 

[brokenagain]

Geoffrey Thomas is a Qantas stooge masquerading as a so called aviation expert ‘aka former baggage handler’. No doubt this article will sort out his Chairmans Lounge renewal.

 

[offshore171]

That's verging on a propaganda piece