A380

Would you fly on this plane? The good-as-new Nancy Bird-Walton touched down in Sydney yesterday, ready once again to ferry passengers around the world. Qantas boss Alan Joyce reckons people will have no worries about hopping onboard this particular flying kangaroo. Do you share his optimism?

There are two ways of looking at this. The first is that this was a new plane with a minor fault (a faulty oil pipe) which nearly caused a major crash. Not good. Alternatively, you could argue that it’s pretty damn amazing that the plane was able to land considering it suffered a pierced wing, punctured fuel tanks and wiring and hydraulics damage.

What say you about this and all other things that happened on the weekend? Anything else grabbed your attention?

By now there should be a persistent warning light flashing in the cockpit of the good ship Qantas. It’s indicating that a large mass of brand confidence among the Australian public is smouldering strongly, emitting smoke and may be about to drop off the starboard wing into the sea.

It used to be welded on but there’s definitely a crack appearing.

This week at Auspoll we thought it would be fascinating to test whether the recent run of technical problems which have plagued the Flying Kangaroo have made any tangible dent in our perception of the airline’s hitherto ‘safe as houses’ image. And it set the red light flashing.

Continue reading "Most people prefer planes when bits don’t fall off" »

Corporate public relations must be a pretty soul destroying way to make a living. You spend your time hoping that nothing bad happens and, when something bad happens, you hold a press conference saying nothing bad has happened. This is probably why company spin doctors get paid so much money.

The other downside is that you have to resist the fundamental human instinct to speak your mind. Rather than cutting loose and declaring that the public is being hypocritical or hysterical in its attacks on your company, you have to adopt a muted and conciliatory tone to reassure people that their concerns, however irrational, are being taken seriously.

If you worked for Qantas right now the temptation would be to issue the following brief statement: “It looks like there was a bit of a bang and some small flames and that a few bits of the plane fell off. It turned around and landed fine. And, you know, no-one died. But because we’re so committed to safety, and have never had a crash, we’re grounding our six A380s anyway until we work out what went on. In the scheme of things it’s not really a major drama.”

Continue reading "A brief message on behalf of Qantas: harden up Australia" »