Outgoing Qantas CEO Alan Joyce may have been beloved of financial markets and the right-wing media, but what might be called “the Joyce model” — underinvestment, attacks on workers, gorging on taxpayer handouts, trying to undermine competitors, offering appalling service and blaming customers when they complain — is looking more and more rotten as his long-delayed (how appropriate!) departure in November nears.
Earlier this year Sydney Airport exposed one of Joyce’s anti-competitive tricks, pointing out that Qantas sought slots for significantly more than its 2019 capacity, but then cancelled vast numbers of flights, leaving competitors without slots. (Virgin also cancelled flights, but had sought only 95% of its 2019 capacity.)
After former Transport Workers’ Union head and now Senator Tony Sheldon had a crack at Qantas, the airline responded on Monday by saying it was all the fault of Sydney’s weather — which at least makes a change from blaming travellers.
The Australian Financial Review — which was banned from Qantas lounges because Joyce didn’t like Joe Aston regularly pointing out his flaws — reported today that the airline industry’s complaints “advocate” has been sitting on a report showing a mammoth surge in airline customer complaints in 2022. Unsurprisingly, Qantas dominated the complaints. The airline’s response — things are all better now, don’t worry about what happened in 2022.
But Qantas is the most complained-about company in the country, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) reported earlier this year. It was using its duopoly with Virgin to gouge customers, the ACCC said in June.
Just to make it a real red-letter day for Qantas, the Herald Sun this morning revealed a misogynist online group operated by male Qantas pilots — allegedly as part of a thriving sexist culture within the airline, partly directed at incoming CEO Vanessa Hudson.
Whether the Herald Sun will now be banned from Qantas lounges remains to be seen. The airline no longer inflicts far-right Sky News on lounge members, but forces passengers using wi-fi to see News Corp content. That means exposing passengers to racist garbage and lies about the Voice to Parliament as part of a “complimentary service”, despite the airline’s standard corporate puffery about respect and acknowledgement of Indigenous Australians.
Aston’s criticism of Joyce apparently required special intervention, but racism and misinformation are provided as a standard feature.
As Michael Sainsbury pointed out in Crikey on Monday, Australians angered at the systematic trashing of Qantas as a reliable quality airline and its incessant attacks on its own workforce might be wondering why the Albanese government is bending over backwards to protect Qantas from competition by refusing applications from Qatar Airways and Turkish Airlines to add international capacity.
Labor has also allowed the ACCC’s airline monitoring brief to lapse, meaning there is no regular oversight of the kind that identified Qantas’s price-gouging.
And the government — despite Sheldon’s fulminations — is also resisting doing anything about the lack of a genuinely independent complaints body for airlines. The ACCC called for an industry ombudsman in June (as well as fines for cancelling flights) but the government is delaying any consideration of an independent complaints body until 2024.
It continues a pattern whereby governments of both stripes seem to regularly elevate Qantas’ interests above the public interest. With government protection like that, it’s unsurprising that Qantas believes it can do whatever it likes — and maybe that won’t change once Joyce has left the departure lounge.
Should the government come down hard on Qantas? Let us know by writing to letters@crikey.com.au. Please include your full name to be considered for publication. We reserve the right to edit for length and clarity.
This is not the “Joyce model” this is the model upon which the global consulting behemoth Mckinsey & Co pioneered beginning in roughly the 50’s to 60’s – it is a model that puts shareholder profit above all else and then ties executive remuneration to share price performance and it sounds a perfect tune in the echo chambers occupied by the global elite.
It matters not if reputational harm ensues or workers lose their jobs or the climate suffers so long as shareholder profits are maximised
id indenture tge lot like tge same scumbafs do to okder unemployed women
Nailed it. They’re not operating an airline; they’re running an investment. The KPI’s that Joyce’s bonuses were based on were all financial. I believe none of them had anything to do with running an airline.
But the damage it does to the Brand value – incalculable – it would be worth billions more if they actually put a valuation on it
A fine précis – grow the margin, starve the service, penalise the work force with prospective penalties and lay-offs while enriching and liberalising the corporate heads. I enjoyed seeing that loathsome leprechaun Joyce having his talking points interrupted by the investigative body who insisted on answers to questions he wanted ‘cancelled without explanation.’ Wonder if he thinks the customers have improved their signing in and boarding skills since he last sheeted home blame to them for being incompetent travellers.
This is the story of Joyce who has plundered millions enriching himself out of what was once a proud and worthy Australian company, using spin, deceit and marketing strategies, leaving it in a sorry and wasteful state. Why was he allowed to prevail?
An Irish grifter in the finest tradition.
to answer your quetion, see the comment from Delerious at1331.
concur
Because he was in good company. Just look at the sorry sack of grifters, corporate shills and loons that have presided In government during the years of his worst excesses. He’s one of their fellow travellers
qantas board approved as did federal government – that was AJ’s job
Same way the ‘Mexican Bandit’ was allowed to take charge of Telstra.
Condemning Joyce is one thing but you forgot to mention the board who like him being like this.
Someone forgot to tell Joyce that sinking the Qantas brand is no longer the objective.
As a customer of Qantas, I wish that he would just go away.
The usual complaints regarding damage to luggage, non arrival of luggage (4 days without bags) and 2 to 3cm long lichen/ mould growing on the toilet walls on a plane from Alliance being operated for Qantas Link and the generally demoralized and exhausted staff.
Record profits?? Go away Alan.
scum concur
id Nationalise our ample resources and our airline and clean up the grifters out of our democracy
And the fawning subservient attitudes our ageing Anglo/Irish ‘elites’ have towards any high profile or ‘top person’ in the UK, US and Ireland……
agreed. their chairman also chairs some very ordinary company boards that operate in government protected sanctuaries
I’m a former platinum frequent flyer, now slumming it as “lifetime gold”. That’s 35 years of expensive loyalty.
This time last year I had to fly to central Europe on a family emergency. Not knowing quite what I’d be faced with, I bought a one-way ticket, reasoning that I’d be able to organise a flight home when required.
Some hope. Qantas online booking couldn’t help, generating increasingly incomprehensible error messages before giving up. Better still, they appeared to have sacked everyone in Europe who had once worked for their customer service units, so that got me nowhere either. Eventually half an hour on the phone to a proper airline (“Emirates”) got me home.
Now any bookkeeper knows that, if you sack people, you save money and increase your profit / reduce your loss – in the short-term. Only talented managers can weigh this up against the erosion of trust in the brand, and the propensity of previously loyal flyers to seek service elsewhere in preference to receiving denial of service by staying loyal. Qantas must have sacked the talented managers for the same reason it sacked the customer service reps.
That’s three decades of loyalty burned on one long summer’s morning in Europe. Never, ever again.
My QFF number is in the 4000s , as I have beef lying with TAA, Australian and Qantas almost exclusively for over 50 years. After being stranded in Dubai International at 10pm with no Qantas support until 8am , after late arrival of Plane from Sydney, only support coming from Emirates, we now fly Qantas only when other airlines cannot supply
destroyed the worlds once no 1 airline ! you cant buy that sort of ineptitude ! oh no it seens money buys us monkeys( sorry my primate friends )
Airlines shouldn’t be permitted to block out spots to the detriment of their competition
In this age of competition and user-pays, maybe it would be a good idea to auction airport slots.
No but they do….just ask Bonza, who have now been forced to curtail a few services they’d only just begun.
What a disgrace.