[Anonymous]

[Binman62]

loved this…. looks like another PR coup for the airline that seems to just love shooting itself in the foot.!! Could also apply equally to BA especially the cleaning bit.

February 4, 2011 – 7:02 am, by Ben Sandilands
It is astonishing and disappointing to read this morning’s reports of Alan Joyce’s pre-half yearly results softening up speech in Melbourne yesterday.

After two years of very hard and earnest work as CEO of Qantas Joyce is still talking about working parties to work out how to fix the airline’s long haul business and rebuild its brand and the evils of open competition with wicked foreign carriers stealing its lunch, to paraphrase.

Surely it isn’t necessary to have a working party to fix the airline’s image or product. Properly cleaning the cabins of the sort of filth that filled the gap between the floor and wall of the last Qantas 767 I flew in would be a start. People do look at the muck under their feet.

And they would like to fly in something that isn’t approaching a moment when it is either flown to the Qantas Museum in Longreach or a scrap yard. The assumption that if a Qantas service isn’t available Jetstar is an acceptable alternative is surely an error. Jetstar is probably the major source of new business for Virgin Blue.

The evidence that Jetstar might be about to move upmarket, by feeding the occasional interlined backpacker, is a mixed signal, but on balance, probably a positive.

One is entitled to hope that Joyce has some good news concerning the airline’s fleet renewal strategies at the half yearly results conference on February 17. Another nine years or so of its once wonderful but now dysfunctional 747-400 fleet is just not on, and the removal of the old 767s and 737-400s is even more pressing.

The recent and apparently soon to be reversed jamming of tiny seven across seats in its A330 domestic business class cabins (and for the second time) is as clear a sign as any that somewhere near the top of Qantas there is product planning with a deep contempt for quality, or a belief that the brand can blind. The rationale for the change was that the jets would be interchangeable with Jetstar in terms of configuration, which is a damning admission.

But the weirdest message to come out of yesterday’s preliminary softening up exercise was the implication that Australia should curb competition so that Qantas could catch up with a whole series of initiatives taken by its evil competitors.

Qantas doesn’t even fly non-stop to Dubai or Abu Dhabi, the centres of darkness yet also the only hub airports in the world growing as fast as those of China. In the very near future there will, on current trends, be more premium passengers passing through the upper level of the Emirates terminal in Dubai than there are passengers flying Qantas in aggregate. If Qantas isn’t prepared to see and recognise the major new markets, and the convenience they bring to flying to secondary cities in Europe and the growth centres of China, what exactly is the Qantas message?

Apparently it wants to stop competitors running in a race it isn’t prepared to enter.

But what is good for Qantas is not good for Australia. The country needs non-stop flights to ‘minor’ Chinese cities that are larger than Sydney and Melbourne, and sometimes both combined, and it needs one stop Middle East connections to North Africa, Russia and the eastern European nations that do not involve absurd connections in London on British Airways flights.

The old thinking that grips the Qantas corporate mind continues to frustrate and baffle those who fly.

The new non-stop services to Dallas Fort Worth are very promising. But they come with the sacrifice of what were full flights to San Francisco in the process, which were claimed to be carrying insufficient business passengers. Really. Try multiplying 300 economy fares to San Francisco and putting them beside 50 premium fares and the maths seem to suggest that it doesn’t matter because the main cabin is cross subsidising the business class seats anyhow.

To suggest to business travellers going to Silicon Valley that they should now change planes in Los Angeles for the thrill of a second encounter with US airport security, and spend an extra three or four hours getting to their destination is really insulting. Most of them will be lost to Qantas and gained by United, Hawaiian, Delta, V Australia and Air New Zealand. How can this possibly be of benefit to Qantas?

The Qantas departure from San Francisco is the perfect opportunity for Singapore Airlines to offer a daily 777-300ER non-stop from Sydney or Melbourne, to fill the gap, and also restore some credibility to Australian government policy that in effect, reneged on an agreement to let the Singaporeans fly the non-stop Australia-US routes.

If Qantas is waiting for a non-stop capable 787 to operate to San Francisco under the Jetstar brand we are all going to be much older when it happens. There may be 787s by the end of 2013, please God that’s only five years later than promised, but there is no sign they will be capable of the performance required for 313 passengers non-stop each way and ETOPS 180 ready by then.

There are alarming signs that Qantas actually believed the marketing and did not inquire as to the reality of the 787. And as far as being unhappy with Rolls-Royce over the non-disclosure of what was or wasn’t happening to those engines on the wings of Qantas A380s, what did it expect from signing away the necessary levels of control over these engines in a forget-everything-and-buy-power-by-the-hour deal?

Surely the answer to Qantas problems isn’t bleating about more successful competitors, or the misfortunes of geography, but investing in the right equipment and the right people.

[austline]

I think Bens article is a little over the top, but that aside Joyce is positioning Qantas for the Virgin A330 entry and yes, and I think he is doing a good job and yes I think competition is good.

My main gripe cuurently with QF is their scheduling, for most of the months of March, April and May they have reduced services between Melbourne and Hong Kong, they normally operate a daily QF029 Mel/Hkg/Lhr – returning as QF30, however they have randomly cancelled flights during this period. I only found this out when I tried to book a seat on the 15th of March, when I phoned the QF premium desk I was told that they have cancelled quite a few flights due to low demand, however I could travel via Sydney at a higher J class fare! Give me a break, going via Sydney means you lose a whole day and at an extra cost! The young lady did suggest I could use OW partner CX who have 3 flights a day, she also mentioned that QF have also cancelled a lot of flights between Syd/Bkk/Lhr but she did say that OW partner BA did have a daily service to compensate.

QF are doing a review of their long haul operations, one thing they should do is start off by getting most premium routes up to a daily service, why introduce a DFW service 4 days a week if they you are targeting the business market, it doesn’t make sense.

One of QF’s big problems is its equipment it needs an aircraft the size of the 777 which would allow it to add frequency and develop new routes. They have a great product in the air and on the ground, both domestically and internationally, far better than most of its competition, it’s just a shame they cannot sort their scheduling and route development out.

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