Qantas to outsource ground handling across Australia

[Must...Fly!]

The domestic ground handling contract is based on the lower capacity aircraft being virtually all that are serviced by the Q domestic terminals ground handlers (nearly Aust-wide with DNATA).

Q unilaterally substituting widebody for narrow body planes is the main reason for the flights leaving without bags, Q will not pay for (& likely DNATA cannot find) previously experienced staff to work for ten days to two weeks over this school holiday/Easter/Anzac peak demand period.

Well for one the ground handling is done by Swissport and two I've no idea what evidence you have for the assertion regarding widebodies in your second paragraph.

 

[RAM]

Well for one the ground handling is done by Swissport and two I've no idea what evidence you have for the assertion regarding widebodies in your second paragraph.

My mistake - I read the references to DNATA in above posts and cough/u/me'd they are the baggage AND ground handlers. Sloppy!

If you can provide a link that proves a B787 turnaround time is the same as that for a B737 - I am happy to be proven wrong. I have not found any.

Turnaround times for B737 are much shorter than for B787s with a B787 described as taking between 90 to 120 minutes. A 737 can be from around 28 minutes (in the US).

The introduction of 35-minute turns would “drive further operational and schedule efficiencies”, lower cost per available seat kilometre and increase the return on invested capital, Qantas Domestic chief executive Andrew David told the financial community during Tuesday’s presentation.

Also, these initiatives would result in an $80 million benefit by the end of 2015/16.

“In effect, what we are implementing are low-cost carrier practices overlaid with full service end product,” David said.

Virgin Australia, Tigerair Australia and Qantas’s low-cost unit Jetstar currently schedule 30-minute turns for most of their domestic flights and use dual-door boarding.

Direct from Qantas presentation (latest on turn around times). Seems they got it half right at least about the low-cost carrier practices.

A benefit of $1.6 million/week for meeting shorter turnaround times. The cascading cost issues from plane delays in leaving the gate leading to delays for every subsequent flight from that gate & at destination airports is much higher than the cost a one-off flight from SYD to MEL that is likely carrying other revenue cargo as well and may well have been a scheduled repositioning flight already.

Never let passenger convenience get in the way of 'enhancing' the senior executive bonus pool.

Mind you, the Q guardian (in the same presentation) said:

Qantas chief executive Alan Joyce said the issue was being well-managed by the airline.

“We are not going to do this and have utilisation go through the roof and end up having customer satisfaction collapse on us,” Joyce said during the investor day.

Perhaps AJ forgot about this part in the intervening years?

 

[Mwenenzi]

Q unilaterally substituting widebody for narrow body planes is the main reason for the flights leaving without bag

Proof? What are those B737's then doing flying around AU?
B330 have been part of the AU domestic network for some time:- nothing new.

 

[jpp42]

Where is the "unilateral substitution" of widebodies (presumably A330) occurring? Normally everyone is on here complaining their A330 has been downgraded to a B737; I haven't seen any talk of Qantas adding capacity by upgrading...

 

[justinbrett]

My mistake - I read the references to DNATA in above posts and cough/u/me'd they are the baggage AND ground handlers. Sloppy!

If you can provide a link that proves a B787 turnaround time is the same as that for a B737 - I am happy to be proven wrong. I have not found any.

Turnaround times for B737 are much shorter than for B787s with a B787 described as taking between 90 to 120 minutes. A 737 can be from around 28 minutes (in the US).

The introduction of 35-minute turns would “drive further operational and schedule efficiencies”, lower cost per available seat kilometre and increase the return on invested capital, Qantas Domestic chief executive Andrew David told the financial community during Tuesday’s presentation.

Also, these initiatives would result in an $80 million benefit by the end of 2015/16.

“In effect, what we are implementing are low-cost carrier practices overlaid with full service end product,” David said.

Virgin Australia, Tigerair Australia and Qantas’s low-cost unit Jetstar currently schedule 30-minute turns for most of their domestic flights and use dual-door boarding.

Direct from Qantas presentation (latest on turn around times). Seems they got it half right at least about the low-cost carrier practices.

A benefit of $1.6 million/week for meeting shorter turnaround times. The cascading cost issues from plane delays in leaving the gate leading to delays for every subsequent flight from that gate & at destination airports is much higher than the cost a one-off flight from SYD to MEL that is likely carrying other revenue cargo as well and may well have been a scheduled repositioning flight already.

Never let passenger convenience get in the way of 'enhancing' the senior executive bonus pool.

Mind you, the Q guardian (in the same presentation) said:

Qantas chief executive Alan Joyce said the issue was being well-managed by the airline.

“We are not going to do this and have utilisation go through the roof and end up having customer satisfaction collapse on us,” Joyce said during the investor day.

Perhaps AJ forgot about this part in the intervening years?

The turnaround times are likely to be influenced more that they're loading 120T of fuel in a B787 vs 8T in a B737 (on typical routes). It's not taking them 2 hours to load the bags...

And in relation to baggage, I would have thought B737 were a pain to load because they are not containerised.

 

[RAM]

The turnaround times are likely to be influenced more that they're loading 120T of fuel in a B787 vs 8T in a B737 (on typical routes). It's not taking them 2 hours to load the bags...

No it certainly is not taking two hours just to load the bags.

Turnaround includes loading and unloading of bags & passengers, food & drinks, rubbish, toilets checked/cleaned/replenished, mechanical checks to name a few. Q, and other airlines, leave the final food load quite late to ensure they're not carrying extra food that adds to fuel required as well as being thrown out at the other end when the carts get taken off. That's why if you buy a last minute business ticket, or swap to an earlier flight, you're warned that you may not get any 'catering'. Q have optimised their food carrying to match the typical proportion of meals consumed per number of business seats in use (for example). They don't just carry one business class meal per business seat on the plane - it is far more complicated. All this happens at a T - X minutes from departure.

With check-in closing the same time before departure regardless of the plane's size - that impacts the whole process.

And in relation to baggage, I would have thought B737 were a pain to load because they are not containerised.

No, B737s are much easier to turnaround requiring a fraction of the time of a B787. That's based on hard data not opinions, and Q's own presentations if you care to look into it further. That is why low-cost airlines predominantly operate single, not twin, aisle aircraft.

Hawaiian Airlines have got turnaround time for fully booked (128 passengers both ways with single narrow exit door) B717s down to as low as 13 minutes (I timed it while waiting to board). From doors opened to doors closed was a few seconds over 13 minutes. Perhaps the hot sun on the tarmac encouraged the handling team's speed.

All facets get taken into account including not just unloading/loading the baggage. With the B787 the balancing of the baggage load (for example) is a much more complicated process than with the B737.

Also the time taken to deplane/board passengers is longer etc etc. Loading the fuel is an independent process to loading baggage & passengers. Equally the time taken for cleaners/Q staff to check every seat is that much longer. Especially if the same number of staff are used for a B737 as a B787 to do the cabin cleaning/checks.

 

[dajop]

with a B787 described as taking between 90 to 120 minutes.

In an Australian context, Scoot schedule 80 minutes at MEL and OOL and 60 minutes at SYD for doing an international turnaround of their 375 seat 787-900. Would it really take longer to do a domestics (short haul) turn around for QF's 236 seat 787?

That aside how many domestic services are using 787 at the moment? I looked at flightaware for a range of routes on Easter Monday, and could not find any.

 

[justinbrett]

No, B737s are much easier to turnaround requiring a fraction of the time of a B787. That's based on hard data not opinions, and Q's own presentations if you care to look into it further. That is why low-cost airlines predominantly operate single, not twin, aisle aircraft.

Hawaiian Airlines have got turnaround time for fully booked (both ways) B717s down to as low as 13 minutes (I timed it while waiting to board. From doors opened to doors closed was a few seconds over 13 minutes. Perhaps the hot sun on the tarmac encouraged the handling team's speed.

All facets get taken into account including not just unloading/loading the baggage. With the B787 the balancing of the baggage load (for example) is a much more complicated process than with the B737.

Also the time taken to deplane/board passengers is longer etc etc. Loading the fuel is an independent process to loading baggage & passengers. Equally the time taken for cleaners/Q staff to check every seat is that much longer. Especially if the same number of staff are used for a B737 as a B787 to do the cabin cleaning/checks.

I'm not sure anyone disagreed with you saying it takes longer to turn around a widebody - that's kind of obvious.

I'm a little unsure of your point? Of course an aircraft carrying 300 pax is going to take longer in all those aspects you mentioned vs a an aircraft with 150 pax.

 

[Must...Fly!]

Sorry ram but most of the points raised seem to be speculative rather than based in fact.

As for Q wanting shorter turn around times, well, who wouldn't. The alternative is raising fares. The context of the presentation you quoted from was the middle of the VA/QF fare wars which was an extremely difficult time to turn a buck.

A330 domestic turns were aimed to be 60 minutes. International has more complicated requirements due to catering volumes and waste disposal rules.

I also don't think a 787 is appreciably more difficult to load balance than a 737.

 

[eastwest101]

I think maybe more the issue is that widebodies typically are containerized and less labor intensive than an uncontainerized B737, its all about the labor intensity and economy of scale. If you have cheap unlimited labor then of course you are going to manually load a B737, if labor costs rise then it might become more economic to use a containerized narrowbody like a A320 (I am assumming that containerisation is less labour intensive than manual loading) and if labour costs are really high then reducing the labour intensity and headcount might even drive you back to containerized widebodies e.g. B767 or A330. Have to balance labor costs vs capital costs of containerization equipment itself.

In all of this is the realization that the world might have changed from a globalised low wage growth environment where outsourcing can drive costs down, to the opposite of that where there is competition for people and labour which will drive wages and costs up. All airports and airlines have tried to automate and use economies of scale for baggage handling as much as possible for safety reasons, as well as costs, so its an anomaly that the critical stage of the baggage handling process can still sometimes be very "manual" and sometimes inefficient (or reliant on fit young guys able to play tetris in confined spaces). Importantly this crucial stage is also the "time is money" stage of having a large capital equipment (an aircraft and crew) tied up at the gate chewing up resources (limited gate space and fuel).

Qantas outsourced the "below the wing" to be low cost outsourced LCC economics and kept the "above the wing" cabin, crew, seats, service levels, catering etc experience for the customer to justify why they cost more than a LCC, best of both worlds in theory. Unfortunately for them - I have never seen an aircraft that can split in two and get the below the wing despatched out of the gate before the above the wing part of the aircraft is ready to leave, and vice versa.

As others have commented on and implied, its all about the performance standards and metrics in the contracts between Qantas' contractors and the airline that is where the rubber hits the road. You can hold a contractor to their contract and send them broke if you want, but if they are not around after that, then you had better have a plan B to get your baggage on the plane.... similarly if you don't monitor your contractor performance then you can expect nasty surprises in the future.

 

[Lynda2475]

That aside how many domestic services are using 787 at the moment? I looked at flightaware for a range of routes on Easter Monday, and could not find any.

There aren't, there was just 1 special luggage only flight last week that used a Dreamliner to clear the backlog of undelivered bags. They are in the main being used for international flights with majority of SYD/MEL being 737s.

 

[dajop]

There aren't, there was just 1 special luggage only flight last week that used a Dreamliner to clear the backlog of undelivered bags. They are in the main being used for international flights with majority of SYD/MEL being 737s.

Exactly, that's what I thought. So the turnaround time of 787's does not seem very relevant. The only 787 domestic sectors that seem to be comon, are part of international legs enroute to LHR and DEL i.e., MEL/SYD-ADL/DRW.

 

[cove]

We know people in Perth who have missing luggage. Not sure that baggage handling changes are working too well.

 

[dylarr]

Has anyone impacted by delayed baggage (greater than 24 hours) over the last couple of weeks submitted claims for expenses (receipts for clothing, toiletries etc)? I'm after any data points for handling times, what was offered etc... Considering they are funnelling all claims through the customer care form which nobody seems to be getting any responses to currently, I'm not holding my breath for a prompt resolution.

 

[UP4014]

Info has office staff helping the catch up; out on the floor checking each bag tag (they were at Easter at least), calling customers, then dispatching the bag by courier.

AJ will retire next year.

 

[jb747]

Turnaround times for a 737 are set at 30 minutes. 35 would be better, but 30 is doable if you have the people ready to go (loaders/fuellers). Cleaners fall off the list at anything less than about an hour. The 13 minute turnaround is simple if all you want is people off/people on. IRS alignment takes time, so that will set your absolute minimum.

A 787 does not take the huge times mentioned above to turnaround on domestic ops. Knowing QF, they’d probably schedule it for 40 minutes. Again quite doable as long as the people are there, set to go. The issue is that the people won‘t be there. There will be delays getting a gate. And there is no fat in this sort of timing. So, the upshot of that, is that when you schedule the aircraft for a day of such turnarounds, any delays compound, with no point at which the schedule can be realigned to fix cascading delays. They did it way back on the 767, and obviously learnt nothing.

The long turnarounds that RAM is talking about happen at the end of long flights where there is some level of engineering, and deeper (but still pretty shallow) cleaning to be done. This happens at the end of the day in domestic ops, not between flights.

I can recall at least one 767 turnaround, when we were curfew constrained, that was done in around 12 minutes. But lots of shortcuts were used, ranging from not shutting down the coughpit, to leaving everything that couldn’t walk where it was (i.e. no luggage or catering). An A380 cold start was done in less than 30 minutes, but that was helped by not having anyone aft of the coughpit.

 

[milehighclub]

The Federal Court upheld the ruling that Qantas illegally sacked 2000 workers, with compensation and penalties to be paid.

 

[sudoer]

Has anyone impacted by delayed baggage (greater than 24 hours) over the last couple of weeks submitted claims for expenses (receipts for clothing, toiletries etc)? I'm after any data points for handling times, what was offered etc... Considering they are funnelling all claims through the customer care form which nobody seems to be getting any responses to currently, I'm not holding my breath for a prompt resolution.

I would suggest calling them on 1300 659 161. They were very helpful in the case of my inoperable IFE claim and the wait time was about 15 minutes, I received my comp points on the same day I called. (obviously a cash refund is going to take longer, but the call definitely sped things up)

 

[Must...Fly!]

The Federal Court upheld the ruling that Qantas illegally sacked 2000 workers, with compensation and penalties to be paid.

Good. This is a lesson to corporate Australia that there is a proper way to do things and an improper way to do things.

If the board had ANY credibility, heads would roll over this disgrace.

Again, I feel the need to stress, I am not known to be a union sympathiser.

 

[TheInsider]

If the board had ANY credibility, heads would roll over this disgrace.

Yeah, good luck with that and the Qantas corporate culture. They will be given a raise instead.