4 hours Ago By Michael Sainsbury
A Qantas departure board at Melbourne Airport (Image: AAP/Con Chronis) Just as the holiday season swings into gear, Qantas’ value of profits over passengers has caught the federal government and the National Rugby League on the hop, with the national carrier axeing its eight-month-old Sydney-Port Moresby flight from February 1. Awkwardly, the decision was made, although not publicly announced, about the same time as the Albanese government and NRL triumphantly unveiled a $600 million investment in a new rugby league team for Papua New Guinea. Crikey understands that the national carrier’s move was so unexpected that transport teams for the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade weren’t even aware and were scrambling for information on Friday.
DFAT declined to comment. (Qantas, as ever, ignored questions from Crikey , as did the NRL.) Aussie passengers face exorbitant fares, delays and cancellations as Qantas limps through holiday season Read More It seems Queen Vanessa Hudson of the Chairman’s Lounge can giveth, but she can also taketh away.
Qantas insiders told Crikey that cutting the twice-weekly route was part of the airline’s ongoing efforts to cut unprofitable routes and free up aircraft for its shrinking, ageing fleet. Airline personnel familiar with flight loads said that flights to Port Moresby from Sydney and Brisbane in recent months had “plenty of empty seats”. Elsewhere, the national carrier is also facing what one pilot described as a “capacity crisis”, which will only be supercharged by surging demand over the holiday period.
A Qantas insider said Monday was “an unmitigated disaster”, saying that there were “at least 12 aircraft out of service for extended periods”. Passengers on a B737 QF168 flight from Christchurch to Sydney suffered not one but two turnbacks. Two hours into its journey, the flight was returned after pilots reported an issue with the radio.
After an engineer inspection, it set off again, only for an “unusual smell” to force another turnback. The same aircraft had also spent a day on the ground in Melbourne on December 14. It’s not just Qantas having issues, either, with its low-cost arm Jetstar being run with “very little wriggle room”, according to pilots.
The two airlines are run separately, but when it comes to moving passengers around — including on and off each other’s planes when cancellation, delays and weather intervene — it’s a joint effort, pilots explain. “On Jetstar, it starts with very tight rostering, and then there are delays, breakdown congestion due to traffic or whatever,” one pilot said. “But the fact is, they can’t do the roster duty, and there’s no crew to replace them.
So in their push for efficiency, they’ve been over-efficient. So they have to cancel flights and they try to push them onto Qantas flights, which are already full. And at this time of year it’s a disaster.
” Problems with Qantas’ newest aircraft, the A220, also continue. Qantas runs the A220s — which replaced the B717, part of Qantas mainline — through regional subsidiary National Jet Systems (NJS). A major issue, pilots said, is that Qantas has tried to get former 717 pilots to move to NJS where the pay and conditions are significantly worse.
”They don’t have enough flight deck crew and the training program has been a mess and is running behind time,“ a pilot explained. Qantas and Virgin pilots only want one thing this Christmas Read More One instance of the problem is Tuesday morning’s QF1254 from Melbourne to Brisbane having been cancelled, due to be flown on an A220. At least one B717 flew last week , having been brought back into service six weeks after being officially retired.
“One crew shortage, one breakdown, one delay, one bad weather event, and the whole system starts to fall apart,” a pilot said. As Qantas struggles to keep its craft in the air and get passengers to their holiday destinations, there are fewer but fuller aircraft. Qantas can fix the problem — for instance, China Southern has put its 10 B787s, the same type of aircraft already in the roo’s fleet, on the market — but it won’t spend the money.
That’s because the full loads, lower fuel and staff bills, and usurious ticket prices that come with the squeeze are only manna for the bottom line and executive bonuses. The Qantas bottom line took another hit yesterday with an out-of-court settlement to provide $120 million for the 1,700 ground workers it illegally sacked during COVID, after almost two months of mediation with the Transport Workers’ Union, which brought the case to court. Qantas faces further penalties, with fines and costs yet to be determined by the court.
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