Qantas grounds entire worldwide fleet

GreatGrey · **Posted:** Sat Oct 29, 2011 12:05 pm

Well, not Birfer related, but since Merooni had me IDed as a Qantas pilot last year...

Qantas grounds entire worldwide fleet
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2011 ... ial-action

Quote:

A Qantas spokesman said it was cancelling all flights indefinitely until unions representing pilots, engineers and ground and catering staff reach an agreement with the airline over pay and conditions.

The airline has already cancelled 600 flights worldwide, including four due to take off from Heathrow in London on Saturday. The carrier plans to "lock out" all employees involved with industrial action from Monday evening. Staff will not be required to turn up at work and will not be paid.

The airline had been forced to reduce and reschedule flights for weeks because of a series of strikes over staff concerns that their jobs are being moved overseas. Domestic and international flights were halted at 5pm (6am GMT).

Qantas's CEO, Alan Joyce, said he was left with no other option, blaming "unreasonable" union demands over pay and conditions.

And FYI, the compensation of the top Qantas execs....

Mr. Alan Joseph Joyce
Chief Exec. Officer, Managing Director, Exec. Director and Member of Safety, Health, Environment & Security Committee.
Pay: $2,800,000

Mr. Gareth R. Evans ,
Chief Financial officer
Pay: $977,000

Ms. Jayne Hrdlicka
BA, MBA, Group Exec. of Strategy and Technology
Pay: $361,000

Mr. Simon Hickey
Chief Exec. Officer of Qantas Frequent Flyer
$875,000

Mr. Bruce Buchanan
Chief Exec. Officer of Jetstar
$852,000

http://finance.yahoo.com/q/pr?s=QAN.AX

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mimi · **Posted:** Sat Oct 29, 2011 12:21 pm

Is it just me or does it seem like there's a rather large disparity between the woman's compensation and the rest of them. :-?

Foggy · **Posted:** Sat Oct 29, 2011 12:22 pm

Just you.

... and me. ;;)

verbalobe · **Posted:** Sat Oct 29, 2011 12:38 pm

Nonsense. They're obviously paid by the vowel-consonant ratio in their surnames.

GreatGrey · **Posted:** Sat Oct 29, 2011 12:39 pm

mimi wrote:

Is it just me or does it seem like there's a rather large disparity between the woman's compensation and the rest of them. :-?

Qantas has had some interesting experiences with female type execs.

Remember when former CEO Margaret Jackson was detained by the TSA?
http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/fe ... estapo.htm

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Adrianinflorida · **Posted:** Sat Oct 29, 2011 1:24 pm

That'll teach those crews, especially the ones cooling their heels in outstations like Tahiti and Hawaii. Parking those planes and stranding those passengers till Monday will show those pilots and flight attendants who is boss! I wonder if any of the rocket scientists in the head office have done the calculations on how much it costs for just one of their A380 super jumbos to be grounded, per day.

neonzx · **Joined:** Tue Mar 10, 2009 9:27 am **Posts:** 4216

Adrianinflorida wrote:

I wonder if any of the rocket scientists in the head office have done the calculations on how much it costs for just one of their A380 super jumbos to be grounded, per day.

Yeah, they've done the math. Grounding the fleet is ~$20M AUD per day.

Quote:

This step is being taken under the provisions of the Fair Work Act in response to industrial action taken by these unions. The financial impact of action taken to date has reached $68 million and the action is costing Qantas approximately $15 million per week in lost revenue. Approximately 70,000 passengers have been affected and more than 600 flights cancelled.

Pilots, licenced engineers and baggage, ground and catering staff are essential to Qantas operations and the lock-out will therefore make it necessary for all Qantas aircraft to be grounded. For precautionary reasons, this will take place immediately (as at 5pm AEDT, Saturday 29 October 2011).

Aircraft currently in the air will complete the sectors they are operating. However, there will be no further Qantas domestic departures or international departures anywhere in the world. This will have an estimated financial impact on Qantas of $20 million per day.

The lock-out will continue until the ALAEA, the TWU and AIPA drop the extreme demands that have made it impossible for agreements to be reached.

Adrianinflorida · **Posted:** Sat Oct 29, 2011 3:09 pm

Special consultant to Qantas, Scott Walker, is quoted as saying "Screw the passengers. Let em take the bus"

A Legal Lohengrin · **Joined:** Tue Oct 26, 2010 9:56 pm **Posts:** 9321

I'm playing the world's smallest violin to express my sympathy. :yawn:

Piffle · **Posted:** Sat Oct 29, 2011 4:35 pm

neonzx wrote:

Yeah, they've done the math. Grounding the fleet is ~$20M AUD per day.

Meh. But that's just Australian dollars. How much does it cost in real money?

Oh wait! It seems that the $AU is actually worth more than the $US these days. Whooda thunk it?

Adrianinflorida · **Posted:** Sat Oct 29, 2011 5:51 pm

The stupidity in this is the fact that Qantas management is screwing thousands of passengers over. Are pilots and other unionized airline employees overpaid, considering the amount of automation in modern aircraft? Maybe. But stranding/ inconveniencing every passenger who paid a shitload to fly their airline is stupid. And yes, many times the slowdowns and strikes that airline employees cause can be just as stupid

GreatGrey · **Posted:** Sat Oct 29, 2011 6:04 pm

Adrianinflorida wrote:

The stupidity in this is the fact that Qantas management is screwing thousands of passengers over.Are pilots and other unionized airline employees overpaid, considering the amount of automation in modern aircraft? Maybe. But stranding/ inconveniencing every passenger who paid a shitload to fly their airline is stupid. And yes, many times the slowdowns and strikes that airline employees cause can be just as stupid

Bite your tongue! :shock:

And clarification, when the article said "unions representing pilots, engineers and ground and catering staff ", in this case engineers means what Americans call Mechanics.

neonzx · **Joined:** Tue Mar 10, 2009 9:27 am **Posts:** 4216

Adrianinflorida wrote:

The stupidity in this is the fact that Qantas management is screwing thousands of passengers over. Are pilots and other unionized airline employees overpaid, considering the amount of automation in modern aircraft? Maybe. But stranding/ inconveniencing every passenger who paid a shitload to fly their airline is stupid. And yes, many times the slowdowns and strikes that airline employees cause can be just as stupid

It's looking to me, someone who has no background on this negotiation, Qantas is being quite generous to it's stranded passengers. AU passengers stranded away from home get $350 AUD per diem for lodging, food, and incidentals. No details on foreigners, but I suspect similar arrangements are offered.

Qantas is fighting AU's OWS with money and a PR stunt.

A Legal Lohengrin · **Joined:** Tue Oct 26, 2010 9:56 pm **Posts:** 9321

neonzx wrote:

It's looking to me, someone who has no background on this negotiation, Qantas is being quite generous to it's stranded passengers. AU passengers stranded away from home get $350 AUD per diem for lodging, food, and incidentals. No details on foreigners, but I suspect similar arrangements are offered.

Qantas is fighting AU's OWS with money and a PR stunt.

$350 a day would not placate me if the reason I were traveling were a funeral, about the only reason I'll get on a plane these days, since I refuse to subsidize stupidity.

Adrianinflorida · **Posted:** Sat Oct 29, 2011 7:20 pm

I'm not saying they are overpaid, but even if they were making what was considered an 'exhorbident' amount, shutting down the airline for multiple days is stupid. Qantas management deserves to be tossed out on their asses. The publicity they get from this will damage then worse than any accident or maintenance irregularities ever would. Hopefully, the smaller Aussie airlines will take a big bite out of this and eat into Qantas' market share. Unfortunately, once the Aussies deregulated their airlines, Qantas absorbed its major competitor, Austrailian Airlines, their only real competition, and the only other carriers down there Are budget, domestic airlines, and foreign carriers. they pretty much have a captive audience.

Foggy · **Posted:** Sat Oct 29, 2011 7:26 pm

I'm going to guess that the average flight on Qantas is longer than the average domestic U.S. flight, because of the distances they cover.

What is the pilots' union asking for that's so "unreasonable"? :-?

ducktape · **Posted:** Sat Oct 29, 2011 8:16 pm

A Legal Lohengrin wrote:

$350 a day would not placate me if the reason I were traveling were a funeral, about the only reason I'll get on a plane these days, since I refuse to subsidize stupidity.

Nor would it placate me!

A few years ago, JetBlue stranded me in Chicago overnight with a couple of my staff. The reason was that, a couple of days before, there had been some bad weather on the East Coast, and even though it was over, JetBlue hadn't gotten its planes and staff repositioned. They let us know this while we were sitting in the gate, about 30 minutes before we were due to board.

So they scheduled us out on the same flight 24 hours later, and refused to pay for us to get on another airline. Yeah, they put us up in a decent hotel and all, but it fucked up all of our plans and put us in a deadline crunch when we got back. I'm paying people for not working and sitting around bored, we're all paying extra for our airport parking, and other things (feed the cats, put out the cans for garbage day, etc.) that had to be stretched over another day. It wasn't enough; they gave us vouchers for free tickets and that wasn't enough, either (worse than that -- I had paid for the tickets and was paying the staff for the time that JetBlue was taking for their time mis-management, but JetBlue issued them to the passengers only and made them non-transferable).

$350 a day wouldn't be enough, either, for some airline to fuck up my life. They should compensate their passengers AND send them to their destinations on other airlines.

Adrianinflorida · **Posted:** Sun Oct 30, 2011 6:38 am

Foggy wrote:

I'm going to guess that the average flight on Qantas is longer than the average domestic U.S. flight, because of the distances they cover.

What is the pilots' union asking for that's so "unreasonable"? :-?

In this era of 'Bust all unions', asking for seats in the cockpit, instead of milk crates would be considered 'Unreasonable'.

realist · **Joined:** Fri Jan 23, 2009 1:33 pm **Posts:** 23523

from The Street...

Australian Court Ends Qantas Strike
By The Associated Press 10/30/11 - 12:26 PM EDT

Quote:

CANBERRA, Australia -- An Australian court early Monday ended the strikes and employee lockout that had abruptly grounded Qantas Airways and stranded tens of thousands of passengers worldwide. The airline planned to speak soon on when flights will resume.

The arbitration court heard more than 14 hours of testimony from the airline, the Australian government and unions after the government called the emergency hearing Saturday. Workers have held rolling strikes and refused overtime work for weeks out of worry that some of Qantas' 35,000 jobs would be moved overseas in a restructuring plan.

The unions wanted a temporary suspension of the employee lockout, but the airline said the strikes had been too devastating and it needed certainty to continue operating.

Tribunal President Geoffrey Giudice said the panel decided a temporary suspension would still risk Qantas' grounding its fleet in the future and would not protect the tourism and aviation industry from damage.

Qantas CEO Alan Joyce said before the panel ruled that the airline could be flying again within hours of a decision.

DaveMuckey · **Posted:** Sun Oct 30, 2011 6:48 pm

If it's tomorrow here, and we're in their yesterday, then where the hell are my keys?

BTW, Air France seems to be cancelling a bunch of flights also. Too.

kate520 · **Posted:** Sun Oct 30, 2011 9:18 pm

realist wrote:

from The Street...

Did I miss the part of the story that said one side or the other got their way? I know it said they were ordered back to work. But what happens to the negotiations now?

This is just a bizarre episode. It minds me of when St. Ronnie fired all the air traffic controllers.

Adrianinflorida · **Posted:** Mon Oct 31, 2011 5:20 am

kate520 wrote:

realist wrote:

from The Street...

Did I miss the part of the story that said one side or the other got their way? I know it said they were ordered back to work. But what happens to the negotiations now?

This is just a bizarre episode. It minds me of when St. Ronnie fired all the air traffic controllers.

I saw an interview on BBC last night, where a union rep said something along the lines of "It's a shame that it took a court order to get Qantas back to the table to negoatiate". It seems like all this order did was tell the unions they cant have any more industrial actions and Qantas can't lock them out. Nothing solved, only that they have to negotiate, I guess.

rajah · **Posted:** Tue Nov 01, 2011 9:09 am

That Bastard Alan Joyce just got a $2 million raise. As someone said " The Leprechaun should take his pot of gold and go back to Ireland"
Dick

GreatGrey · **Posted:** Tue Nov 01, 2011 9:49 am

Quote:

That Bastard Alan Joyce just got a $2 million raise.

"Just" as in after he shut things down, or "just" as in recently?

rajah · **Posted:** Tue Nov 01, 2011 6:35 pm

GreatGrey wrote:

Quote:

That Bastard Alan Joyce just got a $2 million raise.

"Just" as in after he shut things down, or "just" as in recently?

Just before

Falsehoods unchallenged only fester and grow.

Qantas grounds entire worldwide fleet

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