Embattled Australian carrier Qantas said yesterday it would hand out 100,000 free flight tickets in a bid to win back passengers after the shock two-day grounding of its global fleet.
About 70,000 travelers were stranded in 22 cities across the world when Qantas chief executive Alan Joyce grounded the airline on Oct. 29 to force an end to months of strike action by pilots, engineers and ground staff.
The gamble paid off for Joyce, with Canberra stepping in to prevent huge damage to the Australian economy by forcing an end to all industrial action at the airline, but furious passengers have vowed never to fly Qantas again.
The firm’s woes deepened on Friday when an engine problem saw a Qantas A380 diverted to Dubai, in an unwelcome reminder of the engine explosion that temporarily grounded its entire superjumbo fleet exactly one year earlier.
Joyce kicked off a huge public relations offensive yesterday with the A$20 million (US$21 million) offer of a free return flight within Australia or between it and New Zealand for every customer stranded by last weekend’s chaos.
“This ticket offer is one of a range of initiatives we will be launching as a way of saying sorry as we move forward into this period of stability,” he said.
About 100,000 tickets have been scheduled for the giveaway, and the offer is open for two years from Dec. 14, with full-page newspaper advertisements urging passengers to “fly with us, on us.”
Joyce said further announcements would soon be made about compensating overseas-based customers and its 8 million frequent flyers.
Qantas has already promised to refund all “reasonable losses” for passengers affected by the drama, and Qantas spokeswoman Olivia Wirth said the airline would do “everything possible” to win back the public.
“We will be doing everything possible, bending over backwards to make sure they continue to travel with Australia’s national carrier, Qantas,” she told reporters.
The pilots’ union, which claims the airline is losing a “pilot a day” to rivals such as Emirates, said it would have been “a lot cheaper for them to work with their workforce.”
Tony Sheldon, head of the ground staff union, said it was mulling a court challenge to the strike ban this week, pending legal advice.
Irish-born Joyce, 45, worked at rival carrier Ansett when it went to the wall in 2001, costing 17,000 jobs, and he said the experience had scarred him.
“There were suicides, that was horrendous,” he said.
“There’s no guarantee of the right to exist. You have to fight for it and I think that’s what we’re doing,” he told the Sunday Telegraph newspaper.
He has been rounded on by politicians and the public alike, with the media dubbing him the nation’s most loathed man, but Joyce said he was sick of what he described as “racist” slurs about his accent and heritage.
“I don’t think there’s any difference between attacking somebody because of their Irish accent and attacking someone because of their color — they’re all forms of racism,” he said.
AIR SUPPORT: The Ministry of National Defense thanked the US for the delivery, adding that it was an indicator of the White House’s commitment to the Taiwan Relations Act Deputy Minister of National Defense Po Horng-huei (柏鴻輝) and Representative to the US Alexander Yui on Friday attended a delivery ceremony for the first of Taiwan’s long-awaited 66 F-16C/D Block 70 jets at a Lockheed Martin Corp factory in Greenville, South Carolina. “We are so proud to be the global home of the F-16 and to support Taiwan’s air defense capabilities,” US Representative William Timmons wrote on X, alongside a photograph of Taiwanese and US officials at the event. The F-16C/D Block 70 jets Taiwan ordered have the same capabilities as aircraft that had been upgraded to F-16Vs. The batch of Lockheed Martin
GRIDLOCK: The National Fire Agency’s Special Search and Rescue team is on standby to travel to the countries to help out with the rescue effort A powerful earthquake rocked Myanmar and neighboring Thailand yesterday, killing at least three people in Bangkok and burying dozens when a high-rise building under construction collapsed. Footage shared on social media from Myanmar’s second-largest city showed widespread destruction, raising fears that many were trapped under the rubble or killed. The magnitude 7.7 earthquake, with an epicenter near Mandalay in Myanmar, struck at midday and was followed by a strong magnitude 6.4 aftershock. The extent of death, injury and destruction — especially in Myanmar, which is embroiled in a civil war and where information is tightly controlled at the best of times —
Taiwan was ranked the fourth-safest country in the world with a score of 82.9, trailing only Andorra, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar in Numbeo’s Safety Index by Country report. Taiwan’s score improved by 0.1 points compared with last year’s mid-year report, which had Taiwan fourth with a score of 82.8. However, both scores were lower than in last year’s first review, when Taiwan scored 83.3, and are a long way from when Taiwan was named the second-safest country in the world in 2021, scoring 84.8. Taiwan ranked higher than Singapore in ninth with a score of 77.4 and Japan in 10th with
SECURITY RISK: If there is a conflict between China and Taiwan, ‘there would likely be significant consequences to global economic and security interests,’ it said China remains the top military and cyber threat to the US and continues to make progress on capabilities to seize Taiwan, a report by US intelligence agencies said on Tuesday. The report provides an overview of the “collective insights” of top US intelligence agencies about the security threats to the US posed by foreign nations and criminal organizations. In its Annual Threat Assessment, the agencies divided threats facing the US into two broad categories, “nonstate transnational criminals and terrorists” and “major state actors,” with China, Russia, Iran and North Korea named. Of those countries, “China presents the most comprehensive and robust military threat