‘Leaked’ Qantas group chats reveal a gross problem

Winner Fresh Crikey’s Worst Company of the Year Award: Leaked Qantas internal crew chats reveal staff are feeling – ahem – pretty shitty due to “horrible conditions” at some airlines.

ROO remains locked in a fielding battle with ground staff and pilots over new enterprise bargaining agreements that unions say whittle away at the company’s hard-earned and overtime earnings. was done illegally before.

It has now been revealed Qantas left 144 passengers aboard a 20-year-old second-hand plane flying from Newcastle to Perth without a toilet on Monday for more than half of the five-hour flight as pilots refused to land in Adelaide.

The Newcastle to Perth flight is one of the latest additions to the Qantas schedule, but on the airline’s cost-focused agenda energetic An increasing number of “mainline” routes to regional subsidiaries are flown by Perth-based subsidiary network aviation, whose flight deck and cabin crew are paid significantly less than their counterparts on Qantas “mainline” flights. The flights are flown by A319 aircraft purchased from US carrier Spirit, which carry 150 passengers – all in economy. They have been described as “middle age”, a claim submitted by Qantas to pilots. “On any other airline in the first world, these are end-of-life planes,” one pilot said. Crrikey. “They are in terrible shape.”

“I’m not sure about everyone else, but if both our toilets worked for the entire 5 hour flight home from Newcastle, not just the first 2 hours,” Crrikey in question. “Yes, it carries 144 passengers and toilets.

Crrikey On a series of flights he learned that the Business Class toilet remained sacrosanct even in times of contention. Seems to be an ongoing problem. In one of its more ill-advised revenue-raising moves, Qantas is launching its new A321xlrs One less toilet To accommodate three more paying passengers, a move that has been reversed (albeit not for another three years) with planned retrofits that will cost millions. Unsurprisingly, it did not receive the downfall of the decision made under Alan Joyce.

Qantas has been contacted for comment.

Combined with regular complaints and some very disturbing photos about the sharp decline in onboard catering and service from established call centres, it makes one wonder where CEO Vanessa Hudson is spending time 230 million dollars last year To improve customer service – and whether it’s close enough.

Alongside these ongoing insults to its passengers, Qantas Management is once again battling unions over two new five-year EBAs. Ground staff converted by the Australian Services Union (ASU), whose EBA expired in June, face a long delay with negotiations barely starting. Qantas refuses to rule out further outsourcing and is under fire for choosing to outsource Luggage handling at the soon-to-open western Sydney Airport.

ASU Deputy National Secretary Emeline Gaske accused Qantas of “once again choosing cheap labor hire contracts over good, permanent jobs” after “years of offshoring and outsourcing its workforce”. ASU also says Qantas is whittling away at hard-earnings and overtime privileges as it continues low collective pay increases.

Some of these complaints are being made by long-haul pilots who Qantas is insisting on a two-year pay freeze as senior managers continue to bank multi-million dollar bonuses to make the freeze stick. The Australian International and Pilots Association recently criticized Qantas in a note to its members. Two-year wage freeze In a context of high inflation and profitability, which they perceive poses excessive financial risk to pilots.

Unions have claimed Qantas’ bids disguise cost savings as efficiencies and lack meaningful offsets. They also highlighted fatigue protections, duty travel, pay desk restructuring, contact and training protections as key battlegrounds.

‘Qantas is no longer a recovery company,’ Australian Air Pilots Federation says Note to members last month. “The group made profits of just $2.39bn and paid dividends of $800m to shareholders. But the company is sticking to its pay freeze policy, despite successively high profitability. ‘Bailback’ is not only no longer credible, it is insulting and entirely unlikely that Qantas wants industrial relations.”

“The company’s refusal to properly value pilot reforms is not about affordability; it is about choice. Qantas is rewarding shareholders and investing billions in fleet renewals. It must also recognize the value of its pilots.”

Some existing pilots see the concessions in previous EBAs as “pulling their pants down” and allowing management to charge lower wages on the new planes now starting to arrive.

Meanwhile, a tsunami of plans for crew bases in Hobart, Canberra and Mildura – some of which moved to those locations under a Qantas bid just a year ago – saw Qantas offer a raft of concessions and extra pay at a meeting with Unions, pilots last Friday Crrikey.

The problem for Qantas staff is that the company will only do this when it backs into a corner – not because its people are important, as Hudson is so fond of saying.