Welp, Qantas is slashing at least 10 per cent of its domestic flights ’til March 2023 and it’s partly because of those fucked fuel prices.
First cars, then lettuce, then electricity and now planes. Great.
The company gave a stockmarket update — boring! — where it made the announcement. According to The Sydney Morning Herald, “capacity” will be cut on popular routes between Melb, Brissy and Sydney.
Over both the long weekend
Alan Joyce. You force to repeat myself. I’m the author of ‘the spirit of Australia’.Then deserved, now tragically inappropriate. My slogan is hereby vetoed. Please remove it from all fuselages, tickets and advertising.
In their stockmarket announcement, the airline also confirmed it would be giving $5000 bonuses to around 19,000 of its staff.
But that move’s been criticised by a number of unions, including the Flight Attendants Association of Australia, the Australian Services Union and the Transport Workers Union.
They’ve called for the payment to be given to all Qantas workers according to the ABC. The unions also want the payment to go to a load of workers who lost their jobs when the airline decided to outsource in 2020.
and Easter, queues at airports were well and truly cooked. There have also been . Enough there to almost (almost) put you off travelling again.
Qantas CEO said that cutting the flights would actually help with the chaotic airport scenes. Hmmm.
“I think actually, it will help,” he said per .
“The reality is we’re taking capacity out because of oil prices. We buy over $4 billion in fuel every year.
“Our fuel bill has gone through the roof.”
At the moment, those capacity cuts are only affecting domestic flights.
from May 2022 show Qantas had the highest cancellation rates of any participating airline, which also includes QantasLink, Virgin Australia, Jetstar, Rex Airlines and Virgin Australia Regional Airlines.
Qantas’ cancellations were at 7.6 per cent for the month while Rex Airlines’ cancellations were lowest at 1.4 per cent.
But Qantas said cutting the flight capacity would have a “minimal” impact on passengers .
“Those affected will be contacted directly with alternatives as close as possible to their original timing, usually within one to two hours,” it said.
, the bloke behind Qantas’ “spirit of Australia” slogan recently said he wanted the airline to stop using it.
In a tweet, he described the slogan as “then deserved, now tragically inappropriate”. Fucking brutal.
In short, the travel world is in some peak chaos at the moment.
To add to the absolutely rancid vibes ATM, lines to get to the passport office in Sydney were so supremely fucked that people were for folks on Airtasker to queue on their behalf.
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