Qantas grounds every flight

[Debsta]

[jannandjohn]

 

GRRRRRRRR.....:mad:

[kuldalai]

Qantas (NO u) stands for Queensland and Northern Territory Aerial Services.

 

Unions have been playing up top ropes for months with outrageous wage demands, guaranteed job security for life, all flights to be crewed by Australians, all planes to be maintained in Australia etc. Company is losing

$ 15m a week owing to on-going guerilla industrial action . So Board has shut it down worldwide till the Unions come to their senses .

[Cruise Junky]

Just read on twitter courts have ordered them back. They start flying Monday

[Globaliser]

Actually, the reality is that Alan Joyce has pulled off a brilliant coup over the weekend. The unions have been taking industrial action for months; it is that which has been harming the company and driving customers to other airlines.

 

Now the unions have been ordered to stop, and the company has them over a barrel. The unions have in fact simply scored the biggest of own goals. But it's taken Alan Joyce to insert the backbone that had hitherto been absent from the Gillard government over this issue.

 

And now the company may finally have the ability to start taking some real action to allow Qantas to survive in the long term.

They used to be the safest airline with no accidents for many years until the management decided to save money on maintenance.

The concern with relocating its maintenance is the safety of the airline. Qantas has had an really good track record with safety.

Qantas is still as safe as any other airline, and safer than the vast majority.

 

In fact, the recent incidents show exactly how good Qantas is when it comes to safety.

 

If you believe the "offshore maintenance has caused the recent incidents" line that's being spun, you have gullibly fallen hook line and sinker for the xenophobic scaremongering rubbish that the unions have put out as part of this dispute.

I am not a unionist but you need to understand that this striking is about the airline relocating a lot of its maintenance service etc to Asia. It is about screwing the workers, of which a lot will lose their jobs. The company is only interested in increasing its profit. They don't care about how they treat the staff.

You must remember this: Qantas is not viable in its current form. If the unions' job security demands were met, Qantas would wither and die over the next 5-10 years; there will be no more flying kangaroo around the world, and the company will have to be renamed "Jetstar Group".

 

Faced with that reality, what would you do to keep Qantas flying?

The greedy CEO Alan Joyce was given on Friday a $5 million bonus ...

For some context, you might want to read this summary:

Having just watched the AGM webcast and seen James Strong (Chairman, Remuneration Committee) lay this issue out in detail - the assertion that Joyce is getting "such an obscene increase" is without merit.

 

The claims that he is getting a 71% pay rise are false, completely misrepresent the pay structure of the companies CEO, and re-affirms QF's decision to implement a salary package of which the majority is an at-risk component.

 

For those not familiar with at-risk in the context of salary packages, this means that receipt of a designated amount of the salary is entirely dependant on achieving specific, measurable goals for corporate performance. Think of it as the executive version of commission based pay.

 

Joyce's salary package for FY2010/11 is set at AUD 6.02m, of which AUD 2.04m is cash salary. Frankly, on the basis of the work he has done to date trying to strengthen the business and diversify to improve revenue, he's earned every cent.

 

The remaining AUD 3.98m is only payable when Joyce has delivered against the medium and long term targets set as part of his remuneration package, which was voted on and approved at their AGM last year. I wasn't able to discern from the meeting if the allocation of ~1.7m shares (which form part of the Qantas Long Term Incentive Plan - LTIP) is reliant on the meeting of goals and forms part of the AUD 3.98m figure.

 

Targets set for Joyce to earn that additional AUD 3.98m and the LTIP shares are pretty steep, and include a number of metrics rating QF's performance against the ASX/S&P Top 100, and the basket of globally listed airlines. A bit more info about this can be found in the notice of meeting for today's AGM (See pg. 4, col 2).

 

Further, any award of shares to Joyce under the LTIP has to be approved by a vote of shareholders at an AGM. I'd happily wager that if institutional investors weren't happy with the CEO's performance, they'd be doing a lot more than voting done a LTIP motion at an AGM.

[MMDown Under]

My daughter was on a Qantas plane in Sydney, ready to fly to Canberra, when the pilot came on and said "This is not a joke".

 

Words cannot express how disgusted I am with the Qantas Board's decision to ground the whole Qantas fleet immediately.

 

I feel so sorry for their passengers all over the world.

 

Email from Qantas -

 

We deeply regret the impact of our fleet being grounded, but we're pleased to say everything is now back to schedule, following the Fair Work Australia decision. You can now book Qantas flights with confidence and certainty.

 

The last few weeks have been tough for everyone involved. The grounding of our fleet was particularly stressful for our customers and staff, and although we arranged accommodation and are still in the process of reimbursing passengers, we want to do more.

 

That's why we're offering you the choice of a return domestic flight, or a return flight between Australia and New Zealand on us.

 

In my daughter's case, Qantas didn't arrange accommodation. Passengers were just told to leave the airport, as there would be no more flights that day.

 

Qantas is now offering a return domestic flight or a return flight to NZ to try to win back the loyalty of those customers badly let down by their decision to give no notice of the immediate worldwide grounding of their aircraft.