Qantas : QF : QFA

Australian flag carrier Qantas Airways has grounded all aircraft and suspended its domestic and international operations indefinitely, dramatically upping the stakes in its ongoing battle with three workers' unions.

The airline reached this decision after deciding to lock out all employees covered by the agreements being negotiated with the Australian Licenced Engineers Union (ALAEA), the Transport Workers Union (TWU) and the Australian and International Pilots Union (AIPA) from 18:00h Sydney time on Monday.

This comes after several weeks of occasional industrial action by members of the three unions, which has resulted in flight cancellations and disruptions that have cost Qantas Australian dollar (A$) 68 million so far. The airline added that it is losing A$15 million in revenue due to the industrial action.

The Oneworld carrier said that even though the lockdown would come into effect on Monday, the "tense environment" that means that "individual reactions to this lock-out decision may be unpredictable", and that led to the decision to ground all aircraft worldwide.

This would affect only the Qantas international and domestic fleet, it said. Aircraft currently in the air would complete their flights and remain grounded until the impasse is over.

Operations by Qantas' low-cost subsidiary Jetstar will not be affected, and the other members of the Group like QantasLink, JetConnect, Express Freighters Australia and Atlas Freighters will continue flying.

"This is a crisis for Qantas," said its CEO Alan Joyce in a statement. "If this action continues as the unions have promised, we will have no choice but to close down Qantas part by part."

Meanwhile, rival carrier Virgin Australia could add domestic capacity and work with international partners to help fill the gap left by Qantas' grounding.

"With this industrial action that has been going on in the last week, we have announced an additional 40,000 seats in the market over the next number of weeks and months," said a spokeswoman.

"We are obviously now working with all our alliances including Singapore Airlines, Etihad Airlines, Air New Zealand and Delta to see if we can get any extra planes, any extra capacity into the domestic market and also obviously helping those people stranded internationally and abroad."

Joyce pointed out that Virgin Australia is the "main beneficiary" of the grounding. "The great irony is that it [Virgin Australia] pays less, is less unionised and does its heavy maintenance offshore. Yet there is no union pressure on Virgin," said Joyce.

Qantas Airways management believes it had no choice but to initiate the suspension in order to force the unions to "forge sensible deals" with the airline.

"The unions' industrial campaigns are designed to scare away customers. It has become impossible for Qantas to serve our third-party maintenance clients. They are trashing our strategy and our brand. They are deliberately destabilising the company. And there is no end in sight," said Joyce.

The unions, added Joyce, were not just striking over pay but also "trying to dictate how we run our business".

"These are impossible demands. We cannot agree to them because they could ultimately put the Qantas Group at risk," said Joyce. "These unions are running utterly destructive industrial campaigns against Qantas and our customers, hurting all our employees and undermining Australian business."

It added that bookings on the highly lucrative East coast routes are down 25% year on year, and bookings on the loss-making Qantas international business are 10% lower than expectations. Its internal customer research shows there is an "alarming increase in people who intend not to fly" with the airline - up from a "normal" 5% to 20% domestically and almost 30% internationally.

"This course of action has been forced upon us by the extreme and damaging course chosen by the leaders of three unions. It is now over to them. The ball is in their court."

Virgin Australia is boosting passenger capacity and enlisting the help of its airline partners to carry people stranded by the extraordinary grounding of Qantas's fleet, it said Sunday.

Embattled Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard was Sunday under growing political pressure over the economically damaging grounding of her country's national airline, Qantas. © 2011 AFP

Qantas's shock decision to ground its fleet of planes is a calculated gamble that risks trashing not only the "Flying Kangaroo" brand but that of Australian tourism generally, experts say.
© 2011 AFP

Australia's industrial court has begun a hearing into the dispute between Qantas Airways and its unions, with the government hoping for a quick resolution to the impasse that led to the airline grounding its aircraft and suspending all operations indefinitely on Saturday.


On Saturday, Canberra asked Fair Work Australia to look into the dispute between Qantas and the Australian Licenced Engineers Union (ALAEA), the Transport Workers Union (TWU) and the Australian and International Pilots Union (AIPA).

The hearings began that night and ended without resolution, and resumed on Sunday. Fair Work Australia has the legal mandate to end an industrial dispute if that causes "significant damage to the economy", according to its website.

Qantas CEO Alan Joyce, however, told Australian media on Sunday that only an order terminating the strikes will guarantee the resumption of services. A suspension, he added, did not give the airline "certainty".

Flights could resume six hours after it gets approval from the Australian regulators, he said.

The airline said that since the grounding at 17:00h Sydney time on Saturday, over 68,000 passengers have been affected and 447 flights were cancelled.

Operations by Qantas' low-cost subsidiary Jetstar have not been affected, and the other members of the Group like QantasLink, JetConnect, Express Freighters Australia and Atlas Freighters have continued services.

Jetstar, along with other Australian carriers such as Virgin Australia and its partner Skywest, have announced plans to increase services on certain routes to help stranded Qantas passengers.

La compagnie aérienne australienne Qantas a annoncé dimanche que tous ses avions resteraient cloués au sol jusqu'à lundi midi heure locale (01H00 GMT) au moins, en raison du conflit social qui affecte son activité depuis des semaines.
© 2011 AFP

Australia's industrial court has begun a hearing into the dispute between Qantas Airways and its unions, with the government hoping for a quick resolution to the impasse that led to the airline grounding its aircraft and suspending all operations indefinitely on Saturday.

On Saturday, Canberra asked Fair Work Australia to look into the dispute between Qantas and the Australian Licenced Engineers Union (ALAEA), the Transport Workers Union (TWU) and the Australian and International Pilots Union (AIPA).

The hearings began that night and ended without resolution, and resumed on Sunday. Fair Work Australia has the legal mandate to end an industrial dispute if that causes "significant damage to the economy", according to its website.

Qantas CEO Alan Joyce, however, told Australian media on Sunday that only an order terminating the strikes will guarantee the resumption of services. A suspension, he added, did not give the airline "certainty".

• à remettre les avions de Qantas en vol au plus tôt (il ne sera pas possible de restaurer tous les vols demain, mais dès que possible.... pendant les jours qui viennent),
  
• et à obligér les parties à se soumettre tout de suite à une 'procédure d'arbitrage engageant' / "binding arbitration procedure", où le jugement arbitral du Tribunal d'Arbitrage ne saurait absolument être contesté, et devra être implémenté immediatement !
  

Les vols de la compagnie australienne Qantas devraient reprendre lundi après la décision d'une instance d'arbitrage d'ordonner l'arrêt du conflit social qui a affecté dimanche près de 70.000 passagers privés de vols.
© 2011 AFP

Australia's embattled national carrier Qantas will start flying again on Monday afternoon after an unprecedented 44-hour grounding, chief executive Alan Joyce said.
2011 AFP

Government body Fair Work Australia has ordered an end to all industrial action affecting Qantas, which should pave the way for the carrier to resume flights.


The tribunal made the decision after a marathon 15-hour session, ruling that both the airline and the unions in dispute with it needed to bring their actions to an end.

This means that Qantas' will be forced to resume flying again and the three trade unions - the Transport Workers Union, the Australian Licensed Aircraft Engineers Association, and the Australian and International Pilots Association - must stop their strike action.

FWA said that it was acting to prevent "significant damage" to the tourism and aviation industries.

CEO Alan Joyce was quoted in the Australian press indicating that operations should restart at 14.00 local, returning to a full schedule on 31 October.

The airline grounded its fleet at 17.00 local on 29 October in protest at on-going industrial action. Since that time the carrier said it has cancelled 447 flights, affecting 68,000 passengers.

Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard expressed fury Monday at Qantas Airways' "extreme" decision to ground its fleet and bluntly warned the airline to "get this sorted".
© 2011 AFP

Qantas Airways has re-commenced flights after grounding its fleet for almost two days.

QF 41, due for Jakarta, took off from the Sydney Airport at 15:41 local time, after approval from the Civil Aviation Safety Authority.

This is the first Qantas flight to resume service after the Australian industrial court ordered an end to all industrial action by the Australian Licensed Engineers Union (ALAEA), the Transport Workers Union (TWU), the Australian and International Pilots Union (AIPA) and Qantas.

Under the orders issued by Fair Work Australia (FWA), there will now be up to 21 days of negotiation between the parties.

No industrial action can take place during this period and if no agreement is reached, binding arbitration will take place under the control of Fair Work Australia.

The Australian flag carrier had said in an earlier statement that it will resume flights on a limited schedule by mid-afternoon today, and also focus on brining its schedule back to normal as quickly as possible.

Its domestic network will resume normal operations by tomorrow morning, said an airline spokeswoman.

While Qantas welcomed the tribunal's decision, the three unions involved issued statements condemning Qantas' actions and said they will assess the ramification of FWA's orders.

The FWA's order, seems "an unjust decision", said the ALAEA in a statement.

"We think we can fairly say that the outcome as it currently stands was not one that formed part of our plans but may be another hurdle we have to overcome to achieve our overall objective of saving Qantas and our profession from those who appear intent on destroying them," it added.

Barry Jackson, president of the AIPA, meanwhile called Qantas' shut down "a gross over-reaction", and said that the union is hoping for a "positive outcome" from the 21 day negotiation period.

The Oneworld member grounded all its domestic and international operations at 17:00 Sydney time on Saturday in protest of on-going industrial action. Over 447 flights were cancelled and 68,000 passengers affected.

The drastic grounding comes after several weeks of occasional industrial action by members of the three unions, which has resulted in flight cancellations and disruptions that have cost Qantas Australian dollar (A$) 68 million ($72 million) so far.

Irish-born Qantas boss Alan Joyce has defied death threats and alienated the public and powerful alike with a shock grounding of the Qantas fleet that has won him few friends in Australia.
2011 AFP

Handling The Big Jet: the human story of QF32

Last Friday Capt Richard Champion de Crespigny arrived at Qantas's London regional headquarters in Hammersmith to give the staff a personal account of the day in November 2010 when his Airbus A380 suffered a catastrophic engine failure.

I won't rehearse yet again the technical detail of this well-documented event, but I will quote de Crespigny's words to the Australian media early this year describing what happened when his No 2 engine was blown apart by an uncontained turbine disc failure: "The wing was cluster-bombed. The aircraft had phenomenal damage to all systems. But it didn't just recover, it performed brilliantly."

Sure, but the flightcrew had to deal with a badly damaged three-engined aircraft and an ECAM display continuously scrolling a total of more than 60 system failures that clamoured for attention.

This is a brief account of the human side of what happened.

It's true the A380 proved itself pretty robust, but de Crespigny and his crew managed the aircraft's performance and the passengers' wellbeing with considerable skill and judgement. Not every skipper would have achieved the outcome he did.

I was among the audience at the Qantas London office as de Crespigny gave his presentation to the Oz carrier's European HQ team. There were about 25 of them in the room, clearly all ready to be won, but de Crespigny brought them on board from the outset. Every Qantas employee had played their part with his crew that day, he told them, and he clearly meant it.

He reminded them that, among the 469 people on board the A380 that day, not a soul was harmed, and there have been no complaints from any of them since, despite the potential trauma of what they experienced, followed by the inevitable disruption to their planned journeys.

De Crespigny began his account unsensationally, describing the routine departure from Singapore for Sydney. Then, passing 7,000ft, the steady climb was interrupted by two very loud BANGS. The intermediate turbine disc had disintegrated at 8,000rpm, sending supersonic shrapnel slicing through the left wing, piercing a fuel tank and severing electrical and hydraulic runs.

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From then on, he told us, the wing was effectively "dead", electrically and hydraulically.

He related how the accident investigators' subsequent projections had determined that, having sliced through the wing, one of three major disc fragments travelling at twice the speed of sound had missed the fuselage by 2cm.

Instantly he had told us about hearing the BANG, our briefing room was suddenly ringing with the adrenaline-charged chimes of the A380's Master Warning System, just like it had blasted the flight deck that day.

De Crespigny's calm commentary continued uninterrupted through the shrilling alarm, as if he alone was oblivious to it. We were willing it to stop.

In the aeroplane on the day: every time the crew cancelled the aural alert, new ECAM warnings re-started it.

In the Hammersmith briefing room de Crespigny suddenly cancelled the frantic chiming. It felt like it had been ringing for half an hour, but in fact it had been running less than a minute.

The audience had got the point. So you have to think straight with that going on? But how?

In the aircraft, de Crespigny's immediate reaction to the engine explosion was to command the autopilot to level the aircraft out. Simultaneously he set about assessing whether, despite whatever had happened, the aircraft was flying at a safe speed and altitude with enough power to sustain it. #

It was. The electrically isolated No 1 engine had gone autonomous and was running at a useful power setting. No 2 was dead. Nos 3 and 4 were running at different power settings, reacting to the automatic systems' "perception" of what was going on.

The crew themselves didn't know what was going on, but de Crespigny knew the aeroplane was still flyable. So far.

The copilot - Matt - immediately went heads down and began attending to the seemingly never-ending series of system failures. Checklist after checklist, working with de Crespigny and the three other pilots in the A380's augmented crew.

This continued for some time until de Crespigny realised so many systems and units had failed that normal procedures were no use, and might even be counter-productive.

There were no checklists for this stuff.

He realised, he told us, that instead of dealing with the failures, his crew had to determine what was still working, and just use it. "I remember saying, 'Matt, stop!'"

This flight carried an unusually large augmented crew, because a new line-check captain who was checking de Crespigny was himself being checked by a senior one. The result was that there was a spare voice to brief the cabin crew and passengers.

So as soon as it became apparent that the aircraft could be successfully controlled, one of the supernumerary pilots checked with de Crespigny, then used the cabin address system to reassure the crew and passengers that, despite the failure of an engine, the aircraft was perfectly safe, and they would return to Singapore as soon as the crew had carefully checked the aircraft and its systems. "I was, actually, confident that we were safe," de Crespigny told us.

That first cabin address took place about three minutes after the engine explosion. As a result, de Crespigny told us, for the rest of the flight "the mood in the cabin was very relaxed." He related how his cabin service director, Michael von Reth, handed over tactical operational control of the cabin to his deputy, and spent his time moving around the cabin talking to passengers.

It was about 45min, de Crespigny admits, before he himself got to speak on the cabin address. By that time the crew had worked out how long they had before the aircraft would be down to a safe landing weight, but would still have sufficient fuel in the leaking left wing to keep No 1 engine working and maintain the aircraft's balance. They had also assessed the landing performance with no working spoilers, no leading edge slats and limited roll control. Remarkably, they had manual control of all three working engines. They calculated they would stop with about 80m of the runway to go.

All they had to do now, while still at a safe height, was to carry out low speed handling checks to determine the parameters for a safe approach. So they did that.

De Crespigny's briefing to the cabin was not only reassuring to the passengers, it was strategic from Qantas' point of view. He advised the passengers that, once safely on the ground as they soon would be, they pretty quickly would be confronted by the media who would want to know what happened. He briefed the passengers on the essentials of what had happened to the aeroplane, as well as what was yet to come during the approach and landing they were about to begin. De Crespigny was also aware that, after landing, the passengers would naturally access the social media via their smart phones, if only to reassure their families.

The results of de Crespigny's foresight, once the passengers were safely in the terminal at Singapore, were priceless to the airline. As he pointed out to us: "The passengers became a team working for us. They were our evangelists."

The final approach to Singapore was tight work, because the airspeed margin between incipient stall and the speed above which they would overrun the runway was only a few knots. They got stall warnings at 600ft and 300ft, but on the whole it went well. The aircraft stopped within the runway distance about 1h 40min after the engine failure.

De Crespigny admits that the most difficult decisions had to be taken after the aircraft had come to a halt, surrounded by fire crews dousing the hot brakes and covering the growing pool of fuel beneath the leaking tank with foam. The No 1 engine was still running at high power and would not shut down because it was electrically isolated, and so were its fuel shut-offs. Also, the runway they had landed on was the central one of Singapore's three parallel strips, so there were active runways either side. So how to get the passengers safely out into this unfriendly environment, then safely away from it?

Eventually de Crespigny saw the entire complement of passengers and crew disembark into waiting buses via a set of steps at the forward starboard door.

De Crespigny was inevitably the lynchpin of the operation that day, but Qantas' crisis management team worked well. Back in the airport terminal at Singapore, de Crespigny and his crew stayed with the passengers, providing answers and ensuring support. But the support was there. None of the passengers had to fight for anything - accommodation, access to communications. Off duty employees all over Qantas' global network were reporting in to find out if they could do anything to help.

Right now, as I commit this story to the electronic ether, Qantas has been totally grounded as a management response to union strike threats. Be careful with your people, Qantas. A worldwide team of employees who can do this for you has taken generations to build.

Jeannot a écrit:Vous avez effectivement commenté un document similaire mais celui estt récent et date de la semaine dernière. Les réactions du Commandant De Crespigny sont certainement un peu différentes aujourd'hui !

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  "Rolls-Royce had early warning of Trent 900 manufacturing problems"
  

• "Investigative Journalism at its best" ( Sevrien : "rubbish title" / "drivel" ; "investigative journalism" : ... mon oeil ) !
  

DayAfter a écrit:Bonjour

Ces affaires QF profitent actuellement à Virgin Australia.

Attention, les clients que l'on perd ( sauf "captifs" ) ne reviennent pas toujours.....

Et si AF, par exemple, avait un vrai concurrent, en France métropolitaine ?

L'info transmise par Monsieur Sevrien ne fait pas une ligne dans la presse française...

Sevrien a écrit: Il faudra, sans doute, que beaucoup de Français, qui suivent le dossier Qantas, changent de lunettes, pour voir 'correctement' et comprendre. Ce n'est pas une question d'intelligence ou de manque d'intelligence. C'est une question de culture, et de 'câblage culturel'.

Qantas services began returning to normal Tuesday after days of chaos, as the airline began the task of winning back the hearts and minds of passengers and a furious government.

2011 AFP

The Qantas shutdown was a sobering reminder that Australia's entire economy -- from tourism to mining -- relies on the aviation industry to bridge the country's vast expanses, experts say.
© 2011 AFP

Qantas (QF) confirmed to ATW that the Australian Federal Police (AFP) is investigating the alleged sabotage of one of its 265-seat Boeing 767s in Brisbane Oct. 26 while the aircraft was undergoing upgrade work.

The airline is tight-lipped on the details but ATW understands that after engineers returned from a lunch break they noticed several wires were cut on an inflight entertainment system. Further investigation by the engineers revealed more severed wires had been covered up.

On Tuesday, a QF spokesperson declined to give further details other than to confirm the AFP were investigating the incident and insist that safety “was never at risk.”

However, the risk of more serious sabotage apparently was the reason for the delay in QF getting its fleet back in the air Monday after Saturday’s unprecedented grounding, which left more than 70,000 passengers stranded.

After the incident, apparently Australia’s Civil Aviation Safety Authority insisted on a comprehensive sabotage risk mitigation strategy for QF with more thorough checks of all critical systems.

The airline has been engaged in a bitter 10-month dispute with three unions—the Australian Licensed Aircraft Engineers Assn., Australian and International Pilots Assn. and the Transport Workers Union—over new labor contracts, which culminated in QF grounding its fleet Saturday and appealing to Fair Work Australia (FWA) for a lockout of union members ([Vous devez être inscrit et connecté pour voir ce lien]).

According to sources, QF detailed concerns about the sabotage in its confidential submissions to FWA over the lockout. The submission, authored by the airline’s head of safety Susan D’Ath Weston, raised a number of risk scenarios, including flight crew distraction, intentional unsafe acts by flight crew, and intentional unsafe acts by ground crew and engineers that would be undiscoverable by flight crew.

Weston’s assessment concluded that grounding the fleet immediately after the lockout was announced Saturday substantially reduced the risk of sabotage.

As of Friday, QF said it lost A$68 million ($72 million) as a result of the union disputes.

Australian airline Qantas said Wednesday it would compensate passengers stranded by its sudden grounding of all flights over the weekend for "all reasonable losses".
© 2011 AFP