Right now, Australia hates Qantas. But it won't last long

Qantas passengers queued at Sydney Airport last month. Photo: Louise Kennerley

Frank Zappa is always great for quotes. The legendary jazz-rockers of the ’60s usually had something to say, mostly insightful, sometimes quirky.

I’ve always loved his quotes about the country, and what defines it. “You can’t be a real country,” he said, “unless you have beer, and airlines.”

It’s kind of a throwaway line, but it rings true right away. Of course, that’s discounting all the beautiful countries where they don’t drink beer, and he keeps mentioning nuclear weapons, but let’s ignore that for a second. Here in Australia at least, we can understand it. We have a lot of different beers, and we are quite proud of them (if at times an understatement).

And we also have airlines. Qantas. Without realizing it, we are proud of Qantas, and what the airline says about us as a nation. This is a startup company, a successful company, a company that represents courage and adventure and ingenuity, and one with which many of us have experience and connections.

We’ve all flown with Qantas. We all recognize the stylized kangaroo logo, we have all seen it on a plane at a foreign airport and feel the familiarity and excitement. We all know TV commercials. We all know the words for I Still Call Australia Home (even if Qantas changes it).

For that reason, I think, we as a nation always cut back on Qantas’ slack in times of trouble. We need Qantas. It helps define us. It has become part of the foundation of our modern nation. We want this company to be successful and growing. We want to see his planes at airports around the world.

But it looks like we’ve reached the limit of that slack. The fall of Qantas, the brand, over the last few years has been incredible to watch. As far as recent unintentional reputational damage, just self-immolation for no good reason, Qantas may just be outclassed by Russia. And maybe Louis CK.

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It’s not the airline’s fault. There has been a particularly brutal global pandemic for the travel industry, and ongoing issues such as staff shortages and related organizational drama have been felt across the board.

But much of that is Qantas’ fault. This is an airline that took an incredible amount of public money during the pandemic in the form of JobKeeper payments – $1.3 billion, up there with most any Australian company – but still laid off 6000 staff, and laid off another 15,000.

To make matters worse, in August 2020 Qantas announced it would outsource its ground handling operations at 10 Australian airports to third party contractors, resulting in the loss of 1683 local jobs. The move was recently declared illegal by the Federal Court, and is one of the sources of the company’s recent organizational woes (the case will now be appealed to the High Court.)

Qantas PR has recently been a disaster as well. When things started to go awry at Australian airports around Easter this year, as queues began to back down and flights were delayed or cancelled, the company’s chief executive, Alan Joyce, famously blamed his customers for “not fitting in”. That sentiment may have some truth to it, but it’s a simple thing, it’s PR 101: in times of crisis, you don’t blame the customer.

It’s also not an isolated problem. You can fly to Thailand in the time it takes to have someone from a Qantas service center pick up the phone recently. The company’s on-time performance was terrible, worse than its competitors, even its sister company Jetstar. Flights take off without baggage due to an avoidable organizational error. Passengers are stranded at foreign airports, forced to sleep on the floor, because flights have been canceled and no one from Qantas is there to sort things out.

And after all this, you find Qantas executives recently awarded themselves over $4 million in bonuses for a job well done.

Public anger overflowed. If you care to listen to talkback radio, you’ll find it filled with callers venting their frustration (because it seems to be ticking on for seven hours), and pages of letters from Traveler has been met with complaints about national airlines. In the space of a few years, Qantas has gone from an Australian icon to a pariah.

You have to wonder how Qantas bounced back from here. Has any company managed to recover from such a dire position? Is there a brand that has won back the public’s attention?

The answer is yes, and it’s one you’re probably familiar with: Qantas.

Remember back in 2011? Qantas grounded its entire domestic and international fleet, causing monumental disruption to travelers across Australia and the world, due to industrial disputes, after announcing plans to lay off 1,000 workers, even as Joyce enjoyed a 71 per cent pay increase.

But we grew to love Qantas once again. And we probably will this time too. Because we hate to admit it now, Australia needs Qantas. It makes us a real country.

Email: b.groundwater@traveller.com.au

Instagram: instagram.com/bengroundwater

Twitter: twitter.com/bengroundwater

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