freebo

I always liked Qantas, but I have to say the impression I get as an uninformed consumer is I don't want to fly with them right now.

I saw the chief of their pilots association on TV the other week basically saying "corners are being cut on maintenance" it was a really surprising interview.

I've been looking at flights back from the UK after Christmas and find myself avoiding Qantas flights, including codeshares with BA etc.

iamthecreaturefromuranus

It's QANTAS.... Queensland and Northern Territories Airline Service

bcworld

Quantas? You couldn't have liked them that much!

Come off it mate. The Pilots Association is affiliated with the union (ACTU) which wages a campaign via the low brow media to make sure we all know only Australians are capable of maintaining aircraft properly. No doubt the Australian engineers are 'the best in the world'.

I'd have no worries flying Qantas, save for the fact I think they're often pretty ordinary.

freebo

Thanks - I knew that funnily enough but typed it wrong, for some reason, started in Longreach etc.

Now who's splitting hairs

P.S. It was Queensland and Northern Territory Aerial (not airline) Services
P.P.S. Edited and fixed the spelling error, dunno what I was thinking

freebo

Fair point, but I work in an industry where outsourcing is the norm, and have personal experience that offshore workers are not always up to scratch.

iamthecreaturefromuranus

If the outsourced engineers have the same level of skill as the offshored IT people I have to deal with I would never fly with them.. .

bcworld

The same of course applies to onshore workers. In many of these incidents that the news.com.au stories thrive on & which generate page after page of bring the maintenance back here comments, it turns out it was done on shore anyway! QF still does plenty of maintenance here in Australia.

Pollyana

I'd rather fly Qantas than BA anyday, go out of my way to avoid BA sectors, their customer service is kak. Qantas maintenance is no worse than most other major airlines, and a lot better than many. And lets face it, you're more likely to die crossing a road than an an aircraft crash.

freebo

For all of the above, as a dumb consumer my initial point was only that Qantas have a bit of a PR disaster going on here, whatever the cause.

Beedubya

We have been told not to speak to the media.

Pollyana

Fixed the thread title for you too as you weren't able to edit that

smudger_scfc

I'm flying to LA with qantas on saturday!! As long as they have any issues sorted out by then i'll be happy

quoll

Me too. After the last little contretemps with BA on Thursday I will NOT be returning to them EVER AGAIN! (last time I said that, it took me 24 years to renege - big mistake, I should not have weakened!)

zultan

It's surely impossible for any global airline to claim '100% of maintenance is performed onshore' -because what happens if the plane brakes down when it's abroad? Can't always fly it home to get the spanners out.

The QANTAS CEO bloke said it best "Singapore Airlines do 100% of their maintenace offshore and no one has ever questioned their safety record".

I stopped flying BA on the kangaroo route after the quality of the onboard food when through the floor, out of the £1100 I spent on my peak season ticket only £3-4 was re-invested in feeding me.

Dorothy

Did you ever stop to think that maybe there's loads of media because we're in Australia? Strangely (and I'm pretty sure it's not a coincidence) when I lived in Canada we heard all about Air Canada's woes. Since moving overseas do you think AC has fixed all it's problems or is it more likely that being the national airline we would have heard more about it?