Qantas was, once, more than just an airline to most Australians — it was part of the national character. Its safety record was the envy of the world, and the flying kangaroo and staff with Australian accents were always welcome sights for weary travellers heading home from overseas. It was a trusted, even loved, brand, one of the great Australian institutions.
That enviable status has been slowly, methodically, trashed over the last decade, in favour of poorer service, cheapjack offshoots, foreign outsourcing, a perceived fall in safety standards and an attitude of hostility toward its Australian staff.
The result has had a certain inevitability: as Qantas has behaved more and more like just another company, it has been perceived that way by Australians. And if Qantas is just another company, just another airline, then it relinquishes any special claims of affection from Australian travellers. Other airlines — usually offering significantly better services and/or cheaper fares, present a much better option for international travellers.
And thus, in a vicious circle, Qantas responded to the loss of patronage by further cutting back on services, further outsourcing, further reliance on low cost franchises, further confirming to Australians that it was indistinguishable from its competitors — except, of course, that its competitors were better.
Today’s announcements — more of the same, with 1000 jobs lost, another low cost franchise, more routes abandoned — simply signals another step in the long downward spiral of a once-loved Australian icon.
Virgin Blue are probably closer to iconic than Quantas these days.
On the rare occasion when I have traveled by plane, I have not ridden a Qantas-liveried jet since childhood. When I booked tickets on a plane to Melbourne in 2001, I wanted, realy wanted to book with Qantas, but even then, it was obvious where they were heading, so i went with Virgin (I think).
It’s because we won’t pay the air fares needed to keep all our beloved Qantas employees in the lifestyle to which they have become accustomed.
Look, I understand it doesn’t really fit the “decline” theme of the editorial, but I think it’s important to point out that there are a lot of Australians for whom Qantas was never “a trusted, even loved, brand”, or at least not for a very long time. In my experience it’s been the butt of jokes for more than 30 years, and widely derided as an inefficient and customer-unfriendly monopolist.
Now I don’t know if people who think that way were the majority or not, but there were certainly a fair number of us. Whenever I planned a trip I would first tell the travel agent “I don’t fly Qantas”, and was always met with sympathetic understanding. And this isn’t just nit-picking; if you see the recent history of Qantas as just the logical development of a mindset that’s always been there, just variations on a theme, then things become a lot less mysterious.
Alan Joyce never understood Qantas and still doesn’t. Soon there will be no Qantas for him to understand, it will be indistinguishable from other airlines – apart from (probably) being worse.
Hands up, who invited this Joyce bloke to Oz?