Qantas has vowed its operations will settle into a new post-Covid normal within weeks after months of customer complaints over flight cancellations and lost baggage.
The Qantas group executive of associated airlines and services, John Gissing, told the Centre for Aviation summit in Adelaide the airline had “a lot of confidence” going into the September school holidays.
“We can be confidently here today, talking positively about the September holidays ahead of us and … getting back to [new] normal from October,” Gissing said on Wednesday.
Qantas’s highly paid chief executive, Alan Joyce, has faced calls to resign as passengers continue to complain about being stranded or left without their bags.
The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission will investigate complaints about late and cancelled flights, and an investigation into the company’s refund policies is ongoing. The beleaguered airline is also experiencing dragged-out industrial negotiations with engineers, pilots, and baggage handlers.
Gissing’s confidence about improved operations in the coming weeks comes as Virgin Australia announced a campaign called Switch-A-Roo encouraging Qantas frequent flyers to jump to Virgin schemes.
The Virgin chief executive, Jayne Hrdlicka, announced at the summit Virgin was posting an underlying loss pre-tax of $386m for 2022.
That was a “good result” in the context of the pandemic, she said, adding that Virgin was forecasting a profit for next year.
She said Virgin’s performance was on track ahead of the September holidays, after Virgin and other airlines failed to predict the difficulties of resurgent demand as restrictions eased.
Gissing told the summit it was clear Qantas needed to do better.
“I think it is a good story right now, when we look at where we were back in July [in terms of on-time performance],” Gissing said.
July’s on-time performance report showed just 53% of Qantas flights arrived on time, and 52.3% departed on time. Gissing said that was now up to 60% or 70%.
Gissing said the airline had hired 1,500 people since April, was dealing with staff shortage and supply chain issues and had adjusted schedules including connection times for “more resilience”.
Call centre and baggage handling performance are now “better than pre-Covid”, he said.
