Who is flying Qantas? Anyone?

We’ve given up flying Qantas at work mainly because of the irregularity of their timetabled flights. A client who flew Qantas regularly told a story of never (or rarely) arriving on time due to Qantas canceling or delaying flights for no good reason. The consensus, whether true or not, is that they delay or cancel if too few people have booked the service.

To add insult to injury, if you miss an important meeting in Auckland due to a delayed Qantas flight they don’t refund your money – they let you fly with them at a later date.

And now there are these mechanical issues, the most recent occurring last night in Auckland.

Here’s a list to put it in perspective:

• 25 July 2008: A plane made an emergency landing in Manila about 1:20pm after the cabin depressurised due to the hole in the fuselage. The cause was an exploding oxygen tank
• 27 July 2008: A Boeing 737 flying from Sydney with 155 passengers was towed from the runway after a hydraulics failure during Sunday night’s landing.
• 28 July 2008: A Boeing 737-800 left Adelaide shortly after 6pm but turned around 10 minutes into the flight after a door over one of the wheel bays failed to close.
• 31 July 2008: A Qantas check-in system is causing chaos, with economy passengers kicked off flights to make way for business frequent flyers.
• 2 August 2008: A leak in a wing was detected on a Manila-bound Qantas flight QF19, a Boeing 767-300 with 200 passengers on board, shortly after take off from Sydney at 1.20pm
• 13 August 2008: One of four engines on a Boeing 747-300 on a flight from Melbourne was unexepectedly “reduced to idle” speed – without a command from the pilots – as the plane approached Auckland Airport

Qantas CEO Geoff Dixon is apparently still confident enough to fly with his airline. “We do know we have no systemic problem in this company,” he told ABC Radio.

“I mean we are still probably the safest airline flying around.”

There’s a confident man.