Australia: News and Views

The flying kangaroo as Qantas is sometimes known as, is more than a little embarassed by the chaos in airports around the country yesterday. In Perth passengers were locked out the Qantas terminal for hours after baggage handlers and other ground staff walked off the job with no notice.

The union seems unclear on what their problem was- in the end its become clear that the issue is that JetStar, Qantas’s low-cost arm, had given their ground-handling contract to another group and thus put the Qantas staff out of a job and the union out of joint.

Already rated as the least reliable airline by Australian travellers you have to say that the union is doing themselves no favours - having just persuaded several thousand more passengers that hell will freeze over before they fly Qantas again. Virgin Blue and other operaters were unaffected.  Although the union may like to say that they are all about safety - the reality is that they appear to be all about protecting their members in the short-term and to hell with the big picture- like does Qantas even have a chance of surviving the current economic crises which has seen travel cut back significantly.

Qantas likes to pitch itself to the business traveller - but those are the ones’ who want a good chance of getting to their destination  on time -regardless of how nice the inflight service is concerned.  They may well be booking with Virgin Blue next time!

Trackback URI | Comments RSS