Qantas at 80% pre-pandemic capacity announcing extra flights to several destinations. The past few weeks haven’t been very good for our Flying Kangaroo which has been directly and indirectly involved in a few scandals, resulting in the company’s CEO leaving 2 months ahead of schedule.
An airline in turmoil
Qantas has always been one of our great icons, an airline that had a great reputation in the industry and was loved by all Australians. Its amazing safety record and well-known service helped build such a reputation over the years. Unfortunately, in the past few years, there have been incidents that tarnished that great reputation and today our Flying Kangaroo is seriously hurt.
Industrial relations issues, service and recently competition issues have been bringing the airline down to its knees. A few weeks ago the ACCC took legal action against Qantas alleging the airline kept selling tickets to flights that had already been cancelled. Also in the same week, the Australian Government rejected a proposal from another airline to increase the number of flights. This decision is causing all sorts of problems due to the very close relationship between the Prime Minister and former Qantas CEO Alan Joyce since blocking extra flights would benefit the airline and kill the competition in the sector.
Alan Joyce left his position as CEO on the 6th of September, two months before his scheduled departure, with a very cushy payout. This is also adding to the controversy surrounding the airline at the moment.
More planes, more flights, more capacity
In August, in a press release Qantas announced it had reached around 80% of its pre-pandemic capacity and it expected to reach 100% by March 2024.
The airline also announced it would be receiving its new Boeing 787s and returning more of its A380s to service after completing their post-storage maintenance. The company said in that article that this would increase flights to meet the current strong demand.
Qantas is adding another 250,000 additional seats, however, some of these flights might be subject to governmental approval. A new destination has been added with the new flight from Sydney to Johannesburg from July 2024, and capacity increased in other destinations like Sydney to Bali, Sydney and Melbourne to Los Angeles and also the recently created route Sydney-Aukland-New York.
According to the press release tickets went on sale at the end of August. Although this is great news for the airline, the scandals that came after this announcement might be a stone in Qantas’ shoes.
The new CEO, Vanessa Hudson has a very difficult situation on her hands and a big mess to clean. For the sake of this iconic Australian brand, I hope she succeeds and she can get our Flying Kangaroo back to its former glory.