Qantas grounds entire fleet

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Could we cut the racist and anti-national crap here people and get back to the thread? There are way too many posts here making statements about which the authors seem to know little or nothing. If you want to know something from the inside why dont you just try asking me, or is it all too hard and easier to start a mud slinging fest?

LEE.

I hate flying anyway!

Good catch.

Explanation: S&F!

Oi ... QANTAS, Shareholders, Unions And the Fed Government!



Personal Disclosure: Cooee! Stop do that crap ^^^^ and start doing this vvvv !



Fair Dinkum!

reply to post by Garfee

Ok then I will.

On the subject of maintenance and off shoring it to the lowest priced bidder. I have seen good maintenance and bad performed both in Australia and SE Asia, however the track record in Asia and certain cultural obstacles are difficult to ignore. A major problem you get is that you may ask an individual if they have done something or do they know how to do it and they will answer yes when in fact they mean no. It's considered a loss of face to answer in what they see as the negative so you get the answer they think you want to hear. This is some thing that is culturally less of a problem in Western countries and is drummed into their engineers from day one. I have personally experienced this phenomena when dealing with Asian and sub-continent origin engineers many times and it can be frustrating and dangerous. I have personally nearly been injured or killed on several occasions and made to look stupid on quite a few others because I rather foolishly trusted those individuals. I no longer sadly do trust them and always check their work.

As for the level of experience and capability in Asia you have to accept several truths. One, they are on a steep learning curve with a massively expanding industry that cannot in fact cope with the rate of expansion they are going through, in fact no body could cope with it. Second, its a question of education and experience dealing with complex systems they may have never seen or heard of before. Put anybody in that situation from a developing or third world back ground and you are bound to see problems. Thats not to say they are not capable of some things, I especially have enjoyed good working relationships with Philippino's and many of their structural repair engineers are really top notch, but I have also seen some disastrous and truly frightening workmanship and work ethics from others. For example I have seen an aileron control cable that was signed off as inspected and replaced that was very obviously original and had frayed part way through. I have never even heard of such a thing happening in a local facility. i have no doubt that eventually some Asian facilities will develop the skills to carry out complex work reliably on their own aircraft but frankly in is irresponsible to throw work at them they are not experienced at doing simply because they are seen as cheap. And there in lies the problem with this style of corporate thinking. Asia needs top notch facilities in places like Australia to compete with them and help set the bar for ever greater capabilities, not try and annihilate each other in some short sighted stupid corporate greed war.

LEE.

Standing in the shoes of Qantas, a long respected corporation, it would allow one to comprehend their woes. It is more than a labour dispute of rich and poor divide. The PROBLEM is CHINA & INDIA.

1. China's/india's slave workers under the tyrannical CCP gov and corrupt India's buerocracy are really hungry and desperate for jobs, any job that pays even just $100 a month. Majority of them have no education or health care plans, no social expenditure save big empty commie praises that feeds no stomach.

Thus, when India & China's commercial and trade air fleets take to the skies, they are the cheapest in the world, if not the safest.

Worse, the despicable CCP and India are exporting their slaves to asian states and anyone whom wants them. Long made dociled, they hanker down to any indignity and help make the corporatists make exceptional profits.

No one gives a damn about human rights to these fellow human brothers. Worse when it takes away quality and better safety jobs from the educated western world whom definately do deserve the right to shared labour and profits from their employers.

Therefore Qantas predicament today. They may be profitable today, but come tomorrow when the slave labourers gets massive, Qantas will close down sooner than later.

NO nation gov dares defy the atrocities dished out by the CCP and corrupted Indian bureocracy, for the provide massive financial benefits to their paymasters - Corporations. The Rudd gov is well know ass kisser of the CCP and now the Gillard gov in nothing more than a corp's puppet. Australians, both workers and civilians, will be screwed several times over sooner or later, as some are feeling the pain now.

The only solution is that wages be a component for FAIR trade talks, not just FREE trade. China and states with slaves of course will hate protectionism, because human rights is never an issue to them and labour costs are the largest component for industrialists to handle. It is not just products and money exchanges that need to be negotiated, but wages for a level playing field be included as well.

But will national gov do it? Not a chance at all. THEY dont care about us, or ever had. We - human masses, exists only to serve them and can rot if we dont have such slavish wishes or attitude. Freedom is dead. The only freedom we have is freedom to rot and die.....

reply to post by rhesusmonkey


This is not about racism wanting our passenger aircrafts mantained in Australia. Yes of course we want our airline true blue Australian and keep the jobs here however it's not about that, it's about good workmanship using quality parts. It's been found many parts used for our aircrafts in Asia are of low standard...say for example....a particular part should be stainless steel of a particular measurement but an almost exact part made of chrome might be used. The vital word here is ALMOST and CHROME. Australian maintinance engineers have also found chewing gum, super glue and other compounds used for a quick fix to a major problem.

Lets face it, Qantas has the highest safety record of any airline in the world. Since alot of it's maintinance has already gone offshore to Asia, Qantas has had too many close calls for a major disaster. And speaking of major disasters, you have no idea how often BOEING has found many discrepancies with workmanship and cheap parts used in Asian countries where aircrafts have gone down with lose of life that were maintained in Asia. All it takes is just one low quality tiny little bolt or nut of wrong measurement to bring an aircraft down.

It's not just Qantas complaining about some of the Asian workmanship, so are some American, Canadian and European airlines.

www.pirep.org...

When using low cost maintinance of passenger airlines, airline companies have to realise they get what they pay for....but does'nt that also apply to cheap tradesmen in general? You can't put a price on the head of a human being.

It's not difficult to find out how many Asian airlines have gone down because of cheap maintinance. I already googled that and I'm not coming up empty handed.

reply to post by SeekerofTruth101


It's damn difficult to compete with nations like China and India because their living costs is peanuts compared to ours. Australia is home to one of the highest tax systems in the world....and complicated at best. Not a year goes by without new tax rules that only a chartered accountant can figure out.

Many foreigners may say Australia is an expensive country but they don't pay high commercial and residential rentals like we do. For example....Westfield space starts at around $750psm, go to Westfield in the USA and they pay approx $200psm. Rentals of a small 2 bdm unit in Sydney metro would make any American cry who rents likewise in up town Manhatten.

Thats the jest of it.

Originally posted by bluemirage5
reply to post by SeekerofTruth101

 

It's damn difficult to compete with nations like China and India because their living costs is peanuts compared to ours.

I fully agree with you. When the sovereign people pay taxes and the gov provide social expenditure such as infrastructure, it would only be natural that properties fetch a better price and living standard.

The western worker is no less hardworking than his chinese brother. This is not the issue. The issue is living standards.

China slaves pay no taxes and the gov provides no social structures. Social expenditure was supposed to offered by the gov even with no taxes paid by the people, for it can derive its taxes from trading revenues. This is the commie promise.

Unfortunately, the corrupt CCP middle fingered up to the masses and instead spent revenues for themselves lavishly. Thus our china brothers and sisters are living in abject poverty and left to rot - billions of them except those whom are connected to the corrupted CCP and living in cities get to taste the high life, and are not cheap labour in any case compared to their fellow citizens in the large countrysides.

Thus our china brother and sisters can make do with $100/mth, see no future for themselves, and are fully free to committ suicide if they cant deal with it. Such is the repressive gov China is. Corrupted India is no different.

Yet democratic govs, instead of defending their own highly advanced workers but are bending their arses to such despots when the despots are screwing them so thoroughly, it leave one's mind extremely baffled.

Qantas CEO is fully within his right as a capitalist enterprise to do as he had done - shut the company down and greatly inconvenient thousands of travellers worldwide whom had trusted and use Qantas daily - the hardwork of every worker there whom made it possible.

However, for him to put the blame onto the unions, whom were only negotiating for better incentives for workers's hard work and efforts, is disingenious, and only proves his GREEDY corporatist mindset.

His strategy is to make the travellers worldwide join him and pin the blame onto the Unions and astralian workers, raise up a ruckus and stand alongside him in condemning the workers, so that the unions, once again like all unions in this greed filled corporatist ruled world, would back down and even be disbanded.

Once achieved, this monster CEO will then happily get all the cheap labour wants from the puppet Gillard gov, and fill his own and his elite majority shareholder wallets to the brim, at the expense of consumers whom will not be getting cheaper flights anyway, from slave labours and the laid off australian workers.

This man is an unconscionable beast with no scruples, and sadly, is just one of many whom ruled our world.

Will he win? No mortal can predict the future, but I can only hazard a guess that he will win with a puppet Gillard gov in place, just as how UK, France, Germany, Greece, Slovenkia and Italy leaders perfer to screw their own citizens to save elites and mouth hypocratic BS morales in public.

reply to post by ProudBird


Exactly why 3 years ago I didn't bother going to commercial pilot license and onto ATPL. Got all the commercial theory passes and enough hours for private license but that's it.
I could see most airlines cutting costs (wages) like mad. What's a engineer or pilot worth? Are pilots simply a glorified bus driver, one whom has to save a metal cylinder at 30,000ft with 300+ peoples' lives at stake, travelling at nearly the speed of sound over the ground, when all hell breaks loose? Are engineers just glorified bus mechanics, whose' 'bus' can simply pull over and perform a faulty part exchange at 30,000 ft?
Hell even Air New Zealand is outsourcing engineering a whole lot more. They were highly world regarded for engineering but now... Don't forget to blame jet fuel folks. Always someone elses' fault..

One one hand I can understand corporate greed. On the other it sickens me. Only middle ground is communism - that didn't work. So what will? Shareholders and executors giving a little more? Only way the employees can take action, is what they are already doing to quantas. Greedy people get hit in the pocketbook hardest. Is it really just like economic karma in the end?

reply to post by SeekerofTruth101


I'm not even blaming the employees anymore. The unions are partially to blame but responsibility lays solely on Alan Joyce. People forget his part in the downing of Ansett, a damn good airline in their day too.

Now for Joyce to be involved in the downing of 2 of Australia's biggest icons surely is no coincidence.

I watched afew interviews of Joyce in the past couple of days and he appears to walk off after the interview with a smirk from ear to ear. I'm not intirely sold on the media's interpretation of whats really going on behind the scenes but I know the full story will come out eventually. Joyce is not a man I would trust in any shape or form. He most certainly should step down; he reminds me too much of Telstra's old CEO from America who bloody near destroyed that too.

Qantas, no doubt, needs a new CEO and one heck of a new marketing campaign if it wants to lure customers back. With Alan Joyce at the helm, I can only see more disaster coming in the not too distant future.

Many were shocked and inconvenient greatly by Qantas CEO Alan Joyce's arbitary act.

But he is not the first to do that, nor the last. Many corporations had fled to China since the early 90s, leaving their own workers at home whom had helped them in their success, left unemployed.

However, what the despicable Alan had done was unpardonable, for Qantas holds a quasi monopoly on air flights in Australia as well as highly regarded in the world, a national pride and source of employment for thousands. For him to cut flights WORLDWIDE is beyond comprehension or excuses, if not a criminal act.

Although caught in a bitter dispute with unions, the union WOULD never cut ALL operations around the world, nor have the power to do so, as not every Qantas worker is unionized. IF Alan had just simply compromised and settled with the unions, whom were not asking for the sky, but only for a fair share of its profits to workers whom had slogged hard and at lowered pay but not lowered duties, to make it possible.

Alan could have save millions in that dispute and even billions, considering the shut down and then having to apologise and spent on advertising blitz to gain back customers trust.

Cheap labour from China and India is a critical problem EVERY worker and Capitalist company face, something that only govs has the authority to negotiate or protect, but shutting down the fleet proves nothing, more so when alan only blame the unions being the cause instead of going for the root, which i guess he still intends to use to profit - asian serf labour to service the 'Spirit of Australia' Qantas.

Alan had proven himself a greedy foolish and inept buffoon , long on machoism but short on responsible corporate governorship. He is a liability to the not only to Qantas, but to the workers/gov and shareholders as well. He should not only be made to resign, but to refund all his monetary incentives, bonus and INCLUDING his salary over the years for his brainless performance, as a warning to all greed filled corporate officer hell bent on being irresponsible.

Anyone who supports this buffoon is certainly no honest corporate leader, and is someone who is seriously lacking in ethical values if not financial sense.