Today, Crikey received this tip from an anonymous subscriber:

It is a requirement of Japanese law that all
foreign air carriers, operating into and out of Japan must have a
Japanese language speaker as part of the crew complement. Qantas have
as a matter of course, over the past 18 months or so been operating
into and out of Japan with domestic crews. Historically these crews are
not language qualified. I am led to believe that the Qantas crew
involved in this week’s emergency disembarkation in Japan didn’t have a
Japanese language speaker as part of the crew complement. The PAs to
passengers were made by a holidaying Qantas employee. If this is the
case, Qantas has violated its agreement on flying into and out of
Japan.

That’s a pretty serious accusation against Qantas following the recent emergency landing in Osaka
where nine people were injured. The plane, carrying 178 passengers and
13 crew, was on its way from Tokyo to Perth when it diverted to Osaka.

So
did Qantas contravene Japanese law? No, says Geoffrey Tudor, director
of public relations at Japan Airlines, telling us that there is “no
legal requirement – under Japanese aviation law – for Qantas or any
foreign airline to have Japanese speaking crew.”

But in another
respect, our tipster seems to be on the money – the recent emergency
landing and subsequent passenger evacuation was apparently “anything
but usual,” an ex-Qantas exec tells Crikey. “I have it on very good
authority” that a “non crew member on board gave the emergency
evacuation PA after landing, where the predominantly Japanese
passengers were herded out of the aircraft via the slides.”

Why
wasn’t there a bilingual crew member on hand to assist Japanese
passengers? We called Qantas, where a spokesman called Lloyd (he
wouldn’t give his last name) told us that there had been a fluent
Japanese speaker on board. In a follow up call, we asked Lloyd whether
this person was a member of the flight’s crew? The answer: no. On this
particular flight, he said, the normal Japanese speaker was ill, and
wasn’t on board. So it was another Qantas crew member – not assigned to
the flight – who stepped in.

Had this stand-in not been
available, however, would Qantas have left its Japanese passengers in
the dark? When asked if Qantas always has a local speaker on board,
Lloyd told us that it wasn’t Qantas policy per se. Instead, it’s a
“matter of course” – and Qantas “aims to have” a fluent speaker on
board. So if a Japanese speaker hadn’t been available on the day,
Japanese passengers could have been left without a guide.

In
fact, says our ex-Qantas exec, Qantas “used to employ Japanese Flight
Attendants based in Japan who flew on the route for both customer
services reasons eg helping Japanese passengers fill in immigration
entry cards for Australia, and for safety reasons. Being Japanese Cabin
Crew, these crew were fully trained in all safety and emergency
evacuations procedures on a regular basis.” So why is this no longer
the case? “Simple, cost cutting of the like still being advocated by
Dixon and Dame Margaret!!” Ah well, he says, “as long as no
shareholders on-board were inconvenienced then I guess it was OK (not).”