It was painfully obvious at today’s hearing at the Senate inquiry into pilot training and airline safety that the independent air safety investigator, the ATSB, depends on airlines rather than their pilots to tell them whether a safety incident should be investigated. The chief commissioner of the ATSB, Martin Dolan, was examined at length on [...]
March 31, 2011 – 12:57 pm
Jetstar has been accused of bullying pilots in a manner which may put passenger lives at risk by independent South Australian Senator Nick Xenophon after a tumultuous morning’s evidence at the Senate inquiry into pilot training and airline safety. The email (below) was sent to pilots by their former roster captain at Perth (name deleted) [...]
March 30, 2011 – 12:05 pm
According to sources Jetstar is in major damage control in advance of tomorrow morning’s public session in which Qantas CEO Alan Joyce and Jetstar Group CEO (and sometimes rumored Joyce replacement) Bruce Buchanan are expected to answer questions arising from their testimony on February 25. The apparent change of direction (or unravelling) of the sham [...]
March 30, 2011 – 10:33 am
Qantas has slashed its projected rises in domestic and international capacity and will axe management jobs in a further and urgent reaction to the natural disasters in Queensland, New Zealand and Japan and continued rises in fuel costs. However the statement to the ASX avoids putting a figure on what looks like a situation in [...]
It is amazing what comes up in a pre-dawn search for articles mentioning Qantas. In this compact report, reproduced below, Andrew Lobbenberg, an equity research analyst at RBS in London, talks about the removal of national flags from aircraft tails, and a ‘move’ on Qantas by IAG, the International Aviation Group that merged Iberia and [...]
March 28, 2011 – 12:09 pm
News that Melbourne’s main airport is considering putting up a remote T5 budget terminal at the southern end of the Tullamarine site begs the question how more desperately budget it could be given the state of its international terminal and the very ordinary performance of its Virgin Blue and Qantas/Jetstar domestic wings. Melbourne Airport, as [...]
On Tuesday Airbus circulated an image (shown at the end of this article) of ‘the largest A350 XWB fuselage panel made from carbon fibre’ which had been cured at a partner site in Germany to form part of the A350-900 airliner which is expected to make its first test and certification flights late next year [...]
March 25, 2011 – 12:25 pm
Jetstar raised some interesting questions without immediate answers this week when it sent out a press release saying it was finalising an agreement with PayPal to offer its services as another payment option when buying air fares. Q1. Why issue a press release saying you are close to doing something rather than when you have [...]
March 24, 2011 – 11:05 am
No-one who filled up their car yesterday would be surprised by this morning’s third fuel levy increase in quick succession from Qantas. It’s not just Qantas, and more announcements by airlines everywhere will flow thick and fast in the day ahead. The airlines are at the moment leading the awareness campaign about a fuel price [...]
Flights to Australia’s ski fields have an even patchier recent history than peak season snow cover, but Qantaslink is giving the Sydney-Mt Hotham route increased services this year. It is also certain to heat up the long running controversy over air services to the Snowy Mountains resorts themselves, which will be losers as Qantaslink runs [...]
