With Alan Joyce’s departure immediately, the Qantas Board would hope that it will stop the bleeding of its reputation. However, is that enough?
The once renowned Flying Kangaroo that represents the Spirit of Australia, is now a Limping Kangaroo that pretends it is flying. From taking JobKeeper from the government to record profits, while cutting cost through staff layoff then rehire at a much lower pay, outsourcing union workers work overseas, to hoarding flight schedules while selling flights that were already cancelled at an hiked price, Qantas is now being seen as anything but a Heartless and Greedy Kangaroo - all under Alan Joyce’s watch.
But is it just Alan Joyce’s fault?
Without a doubt, Alan Joyce is the face and executioner (literally) of this whole thing. I think they thought that their market power had grown so much that they are immune to anything. But Australia has gone into the pandemic in one way and came out the other end very differently. The yearning for travelling again had made common Australians a lot more savvy when expecting basic flight services. When Qantas can no longer provide the basics such as getting passengers to their destination on time or in time, getting their luggage to the destination properly and undamaged, or even serving the meals that passengers opted for in advance, what can we expect from an airline. And all that without me taking into the consideration that Qantas hiked the prices, even code share prices while offering time restricted redemption for cancelled flights to hoard the money - what’s the point of redeeming flights that are already cancelled in their schedules?
From the papers, and the media, it seems that nowadays a lot of people have a horror story.
I personally had that experience when back in April I booked a package using my points because I couldn’t use my points for my earlier trip (more on that later). I got to Canberra alright, the hotel was good (not because of Qantas) but on the way back it was a disaster. When I got to the airport, the flights before and after mine were cancelled. So people booked on those flights panicked at the check in and then squeezed on to mine. However, my flight did not come until quite late, and departed at the same time as the later cancelled flight. There were no reasons or apologies given by Qantas, we all just sat at the gate waiting for boarding. At that time I thought, if we were flying out at the scheduled but cancelled flight time, why was the flight cancelled in the first place? And for me, my friends offered to pick me up home before they went to dinner, so they had to postpone the dinner because I was more than an hour late. At that time, all I could think of was Qantas didn’t care about our schedules, only theirs.
About my earlier trip this year, I was hoping to use my mileage point that I built up over the years to claim the ticket. However, when I opened the Qantas website, what I found out was that Qantas had drastically increased the number of points required to even claim economy tickets. So all the points I saved up laid to waste. And when I tried to buy a ticket, I found out that they are charging AUD500 more than Cathay Pacific, while at the same time, using a code shared flight flown by Cathay Pacific. At that point, I completely gave up my loyalty with Qantas, as I felt that I am not valued as a long term supporter, but just an ignorant cash cow for this airline.
I am not a union person, never have been. But I do expect that when you offer your service you should be paid fairly and accordingly. And in return, I will provide what my salary covers. That’s not the case for my friends at Qantas. Most of them were ‘let go’ during the pandemic, despite the government at that time giving them AUD24 million to keep them afloat (turned out Qantas scored record profit instead). The situation was so bad that there were no staff in the Human Resources managing the layoff, and one of my friends who actually resigned for another job, was later told by Qantas that on their HR record, he never resigned. One of my friends who was a cabin crew at Qantas left because she was asked to do additional shifts at a lower pay ‘to get through the tough time together’. She felt insulted after the whole saga and quit flying for good. And a pilot friend of mine didn’t fare better either, and as we knew the pilot union is quite glad that Alan Joyce is finally a thing of the past.
I mean how did it come down to this?
It was supposed to represent Australia, but now it represents nothing but greed and oppression. Shareholders’ desire for profit had now completely out-weighed running a servicing business properly. When staff are just working cows for you to milk with minimal effort and customers are just golden geese to be slaughtered, you eventually lose both, and that seems to be the case with Qantas nowadays. Its bullying and monopolistic aura had caught up with them. But with the current CFO now promoted to CEO, would it be worse? That’s yet to be seen.
As for me, I will take this opportunity to explore other airlines that may see customers as real customers, not a burden on their flights causing more fuel loading.
