Qantas appears to be jacking up the price of fares to pay for a time-limited promotion. That is illegal under the Consumer & Competition Act.
Source: Qantas gets customers to pay surcharge during promo. What’s the scam? – Michael West
Tag: QANTAS
Announcing the Scam of the Year awards in Australian business and politics. What an embarrassment of rorting riches it is. Michael West with the countdown of elite scams, the creme de la creme, unvarnished, what you will not read in fossil media.
Source: Scam of the Year 2023: nine of the niftiest scams in Australian business and politics – Michael West
We are very excited to announce that Michael West Media will be starting an airline. We haven’t set a date yet, nor do we have any planes, pilots or stewards, but watch this space, tickets will be on sale soon!
We made this decision after Qantas – an actual airline with planes, pilots, stewards, and some very clever finance people, revealed to the world (and the ACCC) that although it is an airline, it doesn’t really sell airline tickets as such. Its customers are:
not buying a specific flight when they book to travel but instead a ‘bundle of rights’ to fly.
Source: Welcome to West Air – our latest flight of Qantas fancy! – Michael West
It’s called “posturing” by an inquiry that will be a whitewash rather than a genuine investigation into QANTAS and the fiefdom Joyce once controlled.
Former Qantas boss Alan Joyce has been threatened with jail time if he refuses to front a public inquiry into the blocking of extra flights from Qatar.
Source: Former Qantas CEO Joyce faces extraordinary jail threat
The Qantas Code of Conduct and Ethics is perhaps the most ignored and hypocritical document in corporate Australia. Michael Sainsbury checks out the myriad breaches.
Source: The Qantas Code of Conduct and Ethics … yes it’s real – Michael West
Nevertheless, this man was celebrated as a hero by the LNP with $5+B in subsidies. “Better Money Managers” who the fuck thinks so? Corporate Minders, Caretakers of Capitalism that’s the scam? Morrison’s devotion was to manipulation by media marketing no matter the cost and we paid for the inevitable failures.
Qantas has dropped dramatically from the top five in an annual ranking of the world’s best airlines, falling all the way to 17th.
Source: World Airline Awards 2023: Qantas plummets; Singapore Airlines takes top spot from Qatar Airways
What’s the scam with the Qantas board letting CEO Alan Joyce dump $17m worth of his own Qantas shares into the share buy-back?
The scam is buy-backs. They simply prop up the share price using shareholders’ own money, not to mention, in the case of Qantas, the public’s bail-out money. And this buy-back is already in the red so Qantas shareholders have helped Alan get out for a higher price. Meantime, not one new aircraft was bought under the Joyce regime, so the fleet ran down, customer service ran down and now Alan’s successor faces a massive capex bill to fix things.
If they had nationalised Qantas when the Pandemic hit, the government would be floating it again for $12bn now.
Source: Alan Joyce selling his own Qantas shares into the buy-back, que? – Michael West
The ebullience with which Qantas chief Alan Joyce announced the airline’s record half year pre-tax profit of $1.4 billion, underscored the jarring disconnect now at play in the company. Michael Sainsbury reports.
Source: Qantas shareholders re-Joyce, not taxpayers, passengers and staff – Michael West
From flights to rewards QANTAS is not performing but is profiting how is that?
If the airline sector is so essential – and it clearly is in a vast country like Australia that is so far from other nations – healthy competition is vital. The federal government is happy to hand over billions of taxpayer dollars to Qantas to “save it” during the pandemic. Its surging return to record profits has made something of a lie of its pandemic era pleading.
Far better to place some restrictions on Qantas regarding landing rights, put some protections in place for Bonza – and perhaps Rex, consider forcing Qantas to divest Jetstar and give the industry the regulator which it has long needed.
Customers also need a no-nonsense legislated regime of money-back guarantees for cancellations, delays and other issues as they have in the EU, UK and New Zealand.
Catherine King, it’s your move.
Qantas is pulling back capacity to keep airfares up despite a lacklustre ACCC report which found ‘nothing to see here’ in airline competition
After 3 Jetstar and Virgin cancellations we paid $500 to fly QANTAS and get 2 of us home. What we got was soggy Samosas, a cup of Coffee and seats that didn’t recline for double the price.
Qantas profit estimates just jumped again this week when Alan Joyce threatened to axe regional routes, ramping up pressure on politicians to stop the looming industrial relations reforms. Michael Sainsbury reports.
Source: Qantas profits soar, but little room for better pay for staff as shareholders re-Joyce
But the biggest scam came last week when Qantas handed down its profit results and declared a $400m share buy-back. The board apparently deems it okay for Alan Joyce and co to spend the airline’s excess cash – publicly subsidised cash – not on disaffected workers, not on tax, not paying back subsidies, not on services for customers but on … drumroll, buying its own shares in order to prop up the stock price and lift executive bonuses.
Source: Lufthansa paid back its debt, Qantas bought its own shares – Michael West
The Free Market acts
In what is a fitting 90th birthday present for the ABC, Qantas has inked a new deal with the public broadcaster for ABC news bulletins to screen on Qantas flights and in airport lounges. The arrangement means Sky News Australia will no longer be screened in the airline’s lounges, a development that will please critics of the divisive pay TV channel.
And at least three of the Australians blocked from returning home on Saturday’s flight from New Delhi to Darwin, because they tested positive for COVID-19, have since tested negative for the virus. The two revelations raise serious questions about the medical screening process set up by Qantas and the federal government for the resumption of travel between India and Australia.
Source: Australians in India test negative after being blocked from returning home
Charging exorbitant prices for travellers stranded overseas while raking in record government subsidies. Qantas and Virgin are the quintessential cases of “privatise the profits, socialise the losses”. Tasha May.looks at the airlines’ fine balancing act in corporate socialism during the pandemic.
Balancing Act: Qantas reaps $1bn from taxpayers, but jobs, flights, fares all up in the air – Michael West
Yes, it appears that the airline negotiators appear to have walked out of their latest meeting with politicians toting a taxpayer subsidy of roughly $1,200 per seat per flight. And yes, this does seem rather a lot of money, given that it is on top of what the airlines are already charging their customers, say the routine $190 a ticket from Sydney to Melbourne.
Nevertheless, it would be fractious and irresponsible to presume that just because Deputy PM Michael McCormack started work at age 17 at the Wagga Wagga Daily Advertiser and stayed there for 20 years … and just because Alan Joyce, the CEO of Qantas for 12 years, studied mathematical modelling, statistics and numerical algorithms at Trinity College Dublin – and then worked at Aer Lingus in IT and revenue planning – that McCormack and his advisers walked out of the negotiation nude.
The numbers however do appear to corroborate that view.
via Qantas first, daylight second, taxpayers a distant third – Michael West
Qantas will continue to advocate for same-sex marriage despite Immigration Minister Peter Dutton’s pointed criticism of its chief executive Alan Joyce’s public statements.
olddogthoughts 
You must be logged in to post a comment.