Has Qantas got the death rattle?
After spending the better part of a day, trying to rescue Qantas international travel arrangements [even considering alternate carriers] with less than 24 hours before departure – it generates a lot of emotion, not least of which is frustration tipping into anger.
Have we not made progress in the last 30 years – it would appear not. By any measure service provision is worse, customer service is non-existent, reliability is a thing of the past. One needs to question – is this just some curmudgeon blowing off steam?
The growing flood of like minded [or like treated] people on all forms of social media… would indicate not.
On the contrary, the tsunami of vitriol grows ever greater.
Qantas QF1
QF1, Sydney to London, is something you could always bank on - you could set your watch by it. For decades it has been a right of passage, and the launch pad and for many young Aussies to the rest of the world, on Australia’s ‘national carrier’.
So what happened? The delays of this flight, the paucity of customer service, the absence of any skilled personnel to help resolve the resultant chaos, is more than just QF1, SYD – LHR departing 7 May 2024… it is symptomatic of the malaise this airline finds itself in [or keeps digging itself deeper into] and is indicative of problems far greater than one delayed flight, but of a business on the brink.
It begs the question – is that Qantas death rattle I can hear?
Is there any way back for the brand and the business? Or are the leaders just driving the car into the wall and unable to wrest the wheel to get it back on the track?
As a case study in how kill the brand and the business, of a company that used to be one of the most trusted Australian institutions, and the failure of leadership to take charge and change course – it is priceless. Is that what it’s relegated to?
Documents from October 2023 show the percentage of consumers who said they trusted Qantas had fallen from 70 per cent to just 49 per cent in three months.
It went on to say, that Qantas has been the focus of customer animosity after a sharp increase in fares and a deterioration in on-time services since the end of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Also Qantas was accused by the ACCC [the competition regulator] of misleading customers by cancelling flights and not telling them. This action has just been settled with a $100m penalty and $20m allocation for passenger reimbursement.
Hardly the conduct of a well-regarded corporate citizen.
The General Shoe Company
1921, Harvard Business School produced its first single-page mimeographed case study for students, detailing the practical dilemmas faced by managers at the General Shoe Company.
Intended to prompt class discussions, the case method has since been adopted by schools around the world as a core part of teaching.
Case studies have been utilized ever since to prompt discussion and forensic analysis, extending to real-life cases of both business successes and failures. The latter, one would expect, with a view to learning from others' mistakes, so as not to repeat them.
Learning From Failure
After 103 years of learning, it’s not unreasonable to expect that every mistake has been made, recorded, studied, and analyzed - with a plethora of options generated to provide better outcomes or avoid pitfalls altogether.
And yet, failures, errors of judgement, inept leadership, just plain stupidity and hubris continues.
There must be a warehouse full of brogues with a variety of bullet entry and exit wounds where executives, many of them very senior and experienced, have liberally shot themselves in their collective executive feet.
In the immortal words of Julius Sumner Miller, “Why is it so?”
Whilst not a rhetoric question, there seems to be no sane nor reasonable response. Why is it so? Have we learned nothing? Is our hubris so great that we think, “What would they know anyway – this time it’s all different?”.
Qantas: A Case in Point
And so, we arrive at Qantas, once the darling of Australia.
No right-minded Aussie would fly anything other than the ‘flying kangaroo’. It called itself, and we did too, Australia's national airline.
It’s been a long time since it could legitimately claim that moniker, and it certainly cannot now. The question that must be asked is - who has been in charge that has allowed the brand and the business to fall so low? And more importantly, can it recover?
Any objective observer of the state of the business would have to respond with a resounding “No!”
Not because Australians won’t give the business a ‘fair go’, but rather Qantas seems hell-bent on destroying any chance of anyone being able to, or even wanting to, say something positive about them – sticking with them or supporting them.
Neglecting Stakeholders
The only focus seems to have been with shareholders – one can only suspect to continue to provide dividends.
All of the other ‘stakeholders’ – customers, suppliers, employees, partners, contractors, and those poor people in the call centre are clearly adjudged to be collateral damage.
Continuing Failures
And yet it continues – delayed and cancelled flights, lack of communication, completely confused and erroneous messaging, a complete disregard for customer issues.
And support staff is not having people that can answer the phone.
Once upon a time, you’d be connected to longstanding career Qantas people [after only a minute or two] who could, in the blink of an eye, come up with some most amazing solution to any problem. Especially when it came to moving rearranging, sorting out flights. They would do this with aplomb, ease, courtesy and warmth that made travelling with them a pleasure, if not almost a privilege – definitely the Australian thing to do. We supported them, so did the government.
Now the best that can be provided is to connect you to some poor unsuspecting person, who is clearly instructed to answer the phone and be polite – that’s about the limit. No more knowledge of what’s going on than one can find on Skyscanner, SeatGuru and a range of other sources. When an airline representative says they’re going to look at SeatGuru to confirm the seat configuration [after I’ve already done it], is telling.
Then to add insult to injury, I’m asked to stay on the line and answer a survey. Let’s see if I actually get the requested call back.
Mounting Frustration
If you detect the merest hint of frustration, you’d be right. But more than the frustration of dealing with an other company whose vision statement must be “All care and absolutely no responsibility”, it’s the frustration of watching an icon of Australian business implode in front of your eyes. That a group of people can actively destroy what has been built over a century, without so much as a ‘by your leave’.
It is a classic example of a paucity of leadership, perhaps a complete absence of leadership leading to worse outcomes… and so on, down the gurgler.
If ever there were an opportunity to wrench back any and all remaining goodwill, it would be now… instead – crickets.
An Urgent Need for Leadership
So who will it be that steps up to try and recover the brand, to take charge and show leadership – not the current CEO, it would seem – as Rome is burning, there’s not a peep.
As a very public study in organisational leadership, here is the opportunity to fill that widening chasm and publicly declare war on mediocrity, to evidence to the travelling public that although there are issues, everyone, from the boardroom to the front line is on a quest to fix it and garner a lot of public support in the process.
In the 2023 Annual Report, the Chairman’s Message says…
REPUTATIONAL CHALLENGES AND ACCOUNTABILITY
As we move through our recovery, management and the Board are acutely aware of the need to rebuild your confidence in Qantas. We’re also conscious of the loss of trust that has occurred because our service has often fallen short of expectations, compounded by a number of other issues relating to the pandemic period.
Pointing the finger at Covid, completely misses the point. It’s got less to do with Covid, rather, more than two decades of organisational emasculation.
It is fast reaching the point where any public goodwill will be wasted. Then it’s just another airline, with no direction nor strings to pull to convince Australians to give them a fair go. No amount of advertising or PR will fix that.
So, Qantas is at the pivot point – either a remarkable case study in leadership, brand and business recovery OR an irrevocable and very public slide into the abyss.
My question remains… is it too late?
What do you think?