Getting real - what’s happening at Qantas?

I want to touch on a couple of significant issues of general concern to the Australian aviation industry.

First, what's happening at Qantas?

According to media reports and speculation, Qantas now expects to declare a profit of no more than $200 million for the current financial year. Bear in mind, it made $288 million in the first half, so the airline will sustain heavy losses in the second half.

Given that we are now deep in the mire of a global financial crisis, with most airlines serving Australia into serious discounting like never before, with a mutant flu bug running rampant around the world, and stiff competition on the Pacific, I would have thought any profit whatsoever over the whole year highly commendable.

IATA predicts airline losses of around $5 billion for calendar year 2009. Kind of puts the Qantas results into some perspective! Qantas CEO, Alan Joyce, and his ‘new look' management team, haven't exactly been sitting on their backsides watching the aviation world pass them by.

As has been widely reported in the mass media (Joyce didn't do a bad job at all in fronting the cameras - a skill he obviously learnt from Geoff Dixon), 1750 jobs have been axed, including 500 management positions, flight schedules and capacity rearranged and as a consequence, some aircraft parked against the fence with a ‘for sale' sign.

I couldn't believe the way in which some commentators and groups representing Qantas staff, publicly chastised Alan Joyce for taking the action he did in such a timely fashion.

Let's get real. Qantas employs 34,000 people around the world, 31,130 of them are employed right here in Australia. I am far from ever being an apologist for Qantas, but as unpleasant as it might have been to shed 1750 staff, surely Joyce had a responsibility to ‘protect' the jobs (as best he can) of the other 32,250 employees. Furthermore, Qantas indirectly supports thousands of jobs elsewhere throughout the country by spending around $10.1 billion per year on purchasing/outsourcing goods and services in support of its business.

Whilst all this has been going on, the TWU were up to their old tricks and pulled a series of wild-cat ramp strikes on Qantas at MEL, SYD and BNE airports.

Qantas, despite the ‘public posturing' of the TWU, is taking legal action to seek to recover some of their losses from the Union coffers. I would have thought that all employees at all airlines, during these difficult trading times, would do everything possible to ‘protect their brand' and by doing so, ‘protect their jobs'. It seems to me that no one has learnt any lessons from what happened not all that long ago at Ansett!

During the early part of April, the Australian Consumer and Competition Commission (ACCC) released its annual ‘Quality of Service' (QoS) Monitoring Reports for Perth, Adelaide, Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane Airports. For some time now, the airports of Australia, whilst acknowledging the need for objective, factual and accurate monitoring and assessments, have been somewhat dismayed and disappointed at the way in which the ACCC continues to conduct its supposed QoS monitoring.

The present process is inconsistent and consequential reports lack creditability - but it does get the ACCC the media coverage it so fervently craves to ensure it is seen to retain relevance in the eyes of the Government, a not-too-savvy media, and the travelling public. The recently-released reports are yet another example of the headline-seeking ACCC's predictable and jaundiced views on uncontested commentary generally from third party-vested interests.

Let me give you but one example of many that are on the record, to highlight the aforementioned. Last year Canberra airport got a poor rating and here's one of the reasons why! Virgin gave a great review, a positive response came from Qantas, however there was no survey of passengers so the survey form with a 1/3rd weighting, was completed by Customs (yes, this was Canberra) who commented adversely about the Customs processing facilities. That poor mark was enough to give Canberra its poor rating. Pity that Customs had closed their own private facility at Canberra four years earlier. It did not matter to the ACCC that this non-existent facility was known to have nothing to do with airline passengers, but was specifically for visiting heads-of-state and foreign dignitaries etc.

Let's get fair dinkum! As I said, each affected airport has a similar list as long as your arm and although we (the AAA on behalf of its members) have made offers to assist the ACCC to bring their assessment/monitoring methodology into the 21st Century, to date we haven't had any luck.

This time last year we were all ranting and raving about the ‘skills shortage' in our industry and the long-term ramifications for all stakeholders. Almost overnight the issue of a ‘skills shortage' is well and truly on the back burner! The industry cannot afford complacency with regard to maintaining an appropriate level of training if we are to be in a position to make the most of opportunities that will inevitably arise when we emerge from the current industry downturn.