Qantas seems to breed poor publicity: SCMP Opinion Piece

[Auzzieflyer]

Opinion: Australia’s Qantas needs to own its problems for its reputation to soar again

Once lauded as a safe airline with an impeccable flying record, Qantas has in recently years been known for repeated flight delays and poor service.

www.scmp.com

 

[anyonebutqantas]

Good article.

 

[LondonAussie]

The Australian media and politicians also scrutinise Qantas very closely and make it headline front-page news.

British Airways suffered the same collapse in service, after similarly firing most of their workforce and outsourcing or hiring them back on lower wages. Sadly the British just accept this as the "new normal" post-Brexit and post-pandemic and it rarely makes the news - rolling cancellations, lost luggage, useless call centres, or even being stranded by the airline and unable to contact them is no longer an unusual event worth mentioning. Even quite serious issues were barely reported on, such as newly trained cabin crew repeatedly deploying the emergency exit slides by mistake on their first flights.

 

[anat0l]

Interesting how it leads in with "Once lauded as a safe airline with an impeccable flying record..."

My expectation after reading that lead in is that the piece was going to be critical about the Qantas safety culture. It may well be in the toilet for all that we don't know, but there's not much in the article that centralises a mention of safety at Qantas.

 

[NSun]

The Australian media and politicians also scrutinise Qantas very closely and make it headline front-page news.

British Airways suffered the same collapse in service, after similarly firing most of their workforce and outsourcing or hiring them back on lower wages. Sadly the British just accept this as the "new normal" post-Brexit and post-pandemic and it rarely makes the news - rolling cancellations, lost luggage, useless call centres, or even being stranded by the airline and unable to contact them is no longer an unusual event worth mentioning. Even quite serious issues were barely reported on, such as newly trained cabin crew repeatedly deploying the emergency exit slides by mistake on their first flights.

I'm no expert on British Airways but the only data point I have on their service is I flew on them pre-COVID from London to Oslo in 2018 and I didn't even get a free water. Post-COVID, I flew London to Dublin and I got a free bag of crisps - and it was actually decently sized. Did a bit of googling and it turns out that they used the pandemic to improve service in some respects, bringing back free snacks in short haul Y in January 2022. And in the T5 WP lounge, they pivoted to ordered dishes rather than a buffet and I had some decent tacos. Perhaps people are prepared to forgive what they did with their staff if they see an improvement like that, but if they went backwards then it is easy to point the figure at their labour practices. Or maybe its the fact that the EU market is a lot more competitive and airlines are viewed as telcos or utility companies. With regard to cancellations, only one phase needs to be said: EU261.

 

[marki]

Air passenger rights - Your Europe

Travellers' rights - flight delays, cancellations and overbooking (passengers unable to fly on flight they booked)

europa.eu

EU261.