Qantas leaders abandoned their speaking commitments at a major aviation conference, as the industry dissected the airline’s reputational crisis and heard pleas to disrupt the flying kangaroo’s dominance.
Jetstar CEO, Stephanie Tully, and Qantas executive manager of global sales and distribution, Igor Kwiatkowski, had both been advertised as speaking on panels about the state of the Australian air industry at the Centre for Aviation’s (Capa) conference in Brisbane on Thursday and Friday.
However, the pair abruptly pulled out days before without sending representatives to speak in their place, leaving Capa organisers “disappointed”.
Leaders from Virgin Australia, Bonza and various global airlines and airports will speak at the event.
Qantas said the pair pulled out because the company’s focus is completely on customers at this time.
Flight Centre Group CEO, Graham “Skroo” Turner, joked about the lack of Qantas presence when asked about the airline’s turmoil. He said both the former CEO Alan Joyce and successor Vanessa Hudson had his sympathies, and that he believed the airline’s “tough job” restoring the Qantas brand could take between six and 18 months.
The CEO of fledgling budget carrier Bonza, Tim Jordan, contrasted Qantas’s approach with when Bonza announced it was axing several routes months after launching them in July.
“I think it’s been a tough few weeks for Qantas and I think they are trying to address it internally, how they see best to do that,” Jordan told Guardian Australia on the conference sidelines.
“Whether they should be here, I really wouldn’t want to say. But I think they’re trying to come to grips with some of the challenges that they clearly have,” Jordan said.
Jordan said Bonza’s approach was different “because it’s the right thing to do for us”.
“Our engagement, whether it’s with our customers or our teams, is very, very open. That’s who we are.”
“We will have hard and difficult conversations very openly. Where we have things to learn from things we’ve not got right, we will learn that if necessary in a public forum. But the one thing we will never shy away from is learning,” Jordan said.
Qantas’s absence from conference sessions was the subject of intense speculation among delegates to the conference.
“It feels a bit like they’re running away from it,” one industry source attending the conference told Guardian Australia.
It follows weeks of turmoil for Qantas. In less than a month, the airline had gone from posting a record $2.47bn profit, to weathering anger over its flight credits and high cancellation rate, to facing legal action from the consumer watchdog over allegations it sold tickets to thousands of flights it had already cancelled.
On Wednesday, Qantas learned it faces hundreds of millions in compensation costs after it lost its final appeal at the high court challenging a finding that it illegally outsourced 1,700 ground handlers.
During a session, Jordan also blasted what he sees as a lack of political will from the government to disrupt the “cosy duopoly” that Qantas and Virgin enjoy in Australian aviation.
He went as far as suggesting a failure to act on misuse of takeoff and landing slots was against the “national interest” – employing the justification the Albanese government has offered for rejecting Qatar Airways’ request to almost double its capacity into Australia amid questions over the influence of Qantas in the decision.
Jordan said the industry must “shake off the shackles” of the duopoly which operates about 90% of domestic aviation, and said his airline, which is yet to service Sydney, could have 20 routes out of the city up and running by the end of next year if the government cracked down on major carriers strategically scheduling then cancelling services to block competitors.
Qantas, Jetstar and Virgin have long denied they are “slot hoarding”, but critics point to high cancellation rates, the 2021 government-ordered Harris review, and a recent investigation from the consumer watchdog as proof of the behaviour.
Jordan said “the fact that cancellation rates in Sydney are three to four times the average seen in other markets that also happen to experience weather and other things” means it “isn’t a natural phenomenon”.
“If there was political [will] to change the status quo …You’ve got slots over here, which are actually delivering nothing, because they get cancelled. Month in month out, they get cancelled so they deliver nothing to the economy, nothing to tourism, nothing to customers,” Jordan said.
“If Australia is ever going to break the cosy duopoly, now’s the time and it needs to be encouraged through government. Now is the time to do it,” Jordan said.
