Qantas media hysteria flies past reality

Here’s the truth about Qantas and its former CEO Alan Joyce which should bury the unrestrained hysteria of the past week.

The media hysteria over Qantas and its now former CEO Alan Joyce has been quite something - even in our social media age when immediate and unrestrained all-in hysteria has become the desperate default survival mode of formerly mainstream media.

If the headlines and breathless newsreaders – who, to be fair, are only mindlessly reciting what’s been put before them on their teleprompters – are to be believed, Joyce has all-but destroyed the airline, its brand flushed through the U-bend of history.

Nobody will ever fly Qantas again.

Just like nobody will ever bank with the Commonwealth again. Or Westpac. Or NAB or ANZ.

Just like nobody will ever shop at Woolies or Coles again. Or use Telstra or Optus.

The happiest man in Australia must surely be Reserve Bank governor Philip Lowe.

At least for a week or so, he’s no longer the ‘most hated person’ in Australia.

At least, as projected by the media.

Let’s deal with the major myths. Starting with that $2.7bn of ‘government handouts’ for Qantas.

The single biggest component was $1.2bn paid as a straight-forward, completely normal, fee-for-service to Qantas, operating very much as the national airline, flying passenger s and freight through the desperate government-mandated days of Covid.

Almost as much – over $900m – was paid through Qantas in JobKeeper to staff. Just like as with every other business in Australia. Not a payment to Qantas, but paid to its workers.

That terrible behaviour, pursued by the ACCC seeking a $250m-plus fine, of selling tickets for flights that had already been cancelled?

This has been universally painted as a wicked attempt at ‘fees for no service’, A LA the banks.

It is absolutely no such thing.

Everyone who bought one either got on another adjacent flight or got a refund.

More fundamentally, the reason it happened were the massive problems Qantas faced restarting after Covid, dealing with re-hiring staff and supply change issues.

Not, as so ludicrously suggested, trying to claw money from customers – less than $10m or so.

Apart from what should be obvious; taking an ACCC accusation as ‘case proven’.

Remember, this is the same ACCC which, as I have shown with its rejection of the ANZ-Suncorp deal, does not even understand its own law.

The most inane feature of all the hysteria is as if Covid and government closing down the entire Qantas business for three months and then sporadically for another 18 months never happened.

Why didn’t Qantas spring back to a 2019 future immediately it could fly again?

The broader flight credits issue?

Everyone could have got a full refund or used the credit. Qantas kept extending.

And so, Qatar and those 21 ‘not allowed’ extra flights.

A business lobbying government for something to benefit it?

How outrageous. It’s never happened before.

If someone’s to blame it’s the government, not Qantas. Or Joyce.

The entire media is unable to understand, it might have benefited Qantas, but it also benefited every other airline flying into Australia; and they have got three times as many flights as Qantas.

Ah. It’s at least comforting that stupidity still reigns so pervasively.

Originally published as Qantas media hysteria flies past reality