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New Qantas chair John Mullen has said the Flying Kangaroo is starting to “get some of its mojo back” but has a long way to go to regain the public’s trust.
Speaking at the Australian Institute of Company Directors’ Governance Summit on Tuesday, Mullen, who has led the Qantas board for around six months, said the airline’s ageing fleet “should have been replaced earlier” and has led to a reputation for “crap” service.
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“It means that customers are still not getting the optimum experience – whether it is the cabin experience or whether it is a mechanical [issue] on an old aircraft,” he said, as reported in The Australian.
“Unless you’ve got a lot of spare capacity, that cascades down through a whole lot of flights.
“We need to have another year or 18 months of the new aircraft coming on to start to deserve the respect that hopefully we will generate.”
In his speech, Mullen warned guests not to “take reputation and respect for granted”, saying there are “still a lot of people out there who are disappointed by what happened to Qantas”.
“On the one side, it is a business and you are there to manage governance and shareholder returns and all the things you have to do with the business,” he said.
“But, on the other side, you have a huge social responsibility for Qantas as part of the fabric of Australia. Even people who have never been to Australia have heard of Qantas and they see it as a little bit of our identity.
“So, there is an absolute requirement on us to get our act together and ensure it becomes a respected brand for the company and its shareholders but also for the nation.”
Mullen described new chief executive Vanessa Hudson as a “very down to earth, humble person who is very much her own person and makes her own decisions”.
“We are rebuilding the board, we have a great management team, and we have a super chief executive in Vanessa Hudson. She’s not a chip off the old block of the past.”
The address comes as Qantas faces continued delays in its fleet renewal program, with just five A220s currently in service and its first A321XLR not slated to arrive until the middle of the year; delays at Airbus have also pushed back delivery of the first “Project Sunrise” A350-1000s.
The Flying Kangaroo will refresh the cabins on 42 of its older 737-800s while it awaits the arrivals of the A321s, with Hudson saying they will offer a comparable experience.
Rival Virgin Australia has also suffered from delays with delivery of its Boeing 737 MAX fleet, last year shifting 12 of its MAX 10 orders to MAX 8s in an effort to get more of the new-generation aircraft sooner.
Mohammed Huque
says:Qantas’s problem is poor customer service not fleet.