Jetstar

The whole airline business is built on insanely small margins. So it’s hardly a surprise to learn overnight that Jetstar makes its pittance of a profit not from ticket sales but from the sale of muffins and other “food” on board.

Note the inverted commas around the word food. As American satirist Dave Barry once said: “Airline food is not intended for human consumption. It’s intended as a form of in-flight entertainment, wherein the object is to guess what it is, starting with broad categories such as ‘mineral’ and ‘linoleum’.”

Overpriced food aside, Australian budget airlines are not all that bad. Sure, Jetstar’s a bit bogan and Virgin Blue’s a bit like a branch of the Church of the Almighty Cult of His Supreme Hipness Richard Branson. But mostly, they’re OK.

Continue reading "Money for muffins and your tix for free" »

The key take out that everyone in Australia got from the recent Qantas incident in Singapore is that pilot experience is critically important. 

As more and more information filters about just how serious the situation was with QF32, pilot training and experience are being widely acknowledged, from the CEO of Qantas down, as having arguably made the difference.

Given the travails of Qantas over recent weeks, you would think that Jetstar would think twice about its absurd plans to put less and less experienced pilots in the cockpit of its aircraft.

Continue reading "How Australian is Jetstar?" »

Remember the Seinfeld episode where George is slugged $75 because he cancels an appointment with a physio within her arbitrarily decreed 24-hour exclusion zone? “24 hours for all cancellations … It’s our policy,’’ he’s told. When the physio subsequently cancels an appointment with George, also within 24 hours, he demands she pay him $75. “I have a policy …,’’ he tells her.

A man ahead of his time, George Constanza. Who do these people think they are? And why do we meekly acquiesce to such injustices? Needless to say I have my own particular axe to grind, which I’ll get to in a minute, but more broadly this is a call to all self-respecting citizens to stand up to the sort of professional and corporate bullying that insists “their” time is valuable and our time is worthless.

While the cancellation “policy” (consider how often bastardry is cloaked in that word: refugee policy, indigenous affairs policy, tax policy, mental health policy) is the most despicable example, it’s far from the only one. How about the four-hour “window” when you want to get some service – a phone connection, say – installed or a courier package delivered?

Continue reading "Sorry, they’re the rules: my new policy for poor service" »

Next week I’m headed to Japan for a two week break. I tell you this not because I think you have any particular interest in my holiday plans, but because I suspect I’m flying on the same Jetstar plane that had a blackout on the way back from Japan a couple of weeks ago.

For those who haven’t heard this story, the Herald-Sun reported today that a Jetstar plane had an instrument blackout during flight from Japan to the Gold Coast last week as it flew through storm clouds. The problems that affected the airspeed indicators on the Jestar Airbus 330-200 were similar to those reported by the Air France pilot of a similar 330-200 before the plane crashed into the Atlantic Ocean killing all on board.

No sooner had I finished reading this story with a mix of novelty (hey that’s my flight) and horror (oh my God that’s my flight) did I read about the stuff up on a Melbourne to Sydney QANTAS flight.

Continue reading "I’d rather wear the brown undies than the black box" »