Article: The National Carrier Stigma

[AFF Editor]

The National Carrier Stigma is an article written by the AFF editorial team:

The National Carrier Stigma

Many Australians hold strong feelings towards Qantas - and not necessarily positive ones. But it's not unusual for people to dislike their national carrier.

www.australianfrequentflyer.com.au

You can leave a comment or discuss this topic below.

 

[RooFlyer]

Nice, well reasoned article.

Understandably, many people like knowing that they’ll be served familiar food on board and won’t face language barriers. Ask any Aussie who flies Qantas back to Australia after a long stint overseas, and they’ll often say they like hearing the familiar Australian accents as soon as they get on board.

Unfortunately, hearing the Aussie accent on board isn’t a given these days.

 

[amp-qld]

I was let down by Qantas in potentially life threatening situations in 1998 and again in 2003 and their follow ups were appalling. My wife and I still avoid Qantas when we can, despite the problems being more than 20 years ago.

 

[flybynight]

I was rusted on Qantas for more than 30 years and could not understand why they charged what seemed excessive fares on domestic routes when compared with other carriers so I swapped to Virgin and have been a lot happier not only with better fares but also pretty good service. I still fly Qantas internationally.

 

[drron]

I am obviously a soulless person. I certainly did feel a fondness for QF after our first really long haul flight to SFO. It was especially when coming back from LAX. All flights had been booked through Flight Centre as you did in those days. And we were young and inexperienced so had booked an AA flight back from Boston to LAX with a 2 hour connection to QF. Of course our AA flight was late. We ran between terminals and they had kept the QF flight for us. The last 2 on with seats at the door. Yes the Aussie accent was music to our ears. Though it is not so common in Australia these days. That was 1981.

We did fly a lot in the 70s and 80s but usually to Asia,Fiji or New Zealand. We flew QF to Fiji and NZ but SQ or to Asia as they were cheaper.
In the 80s we started flying to Thailand. We flew TG because even their F fares were not that much dearer than QF Y fares. And it was a much better way to fly. I got very used to caviar.

The couple of other trips to the US in the 90s were often on UA as Mrsdrron had LT Golden Wings membership so 3 trips were awards as against 1 for QF. But you know what happened to Ansett.
Then in 2002 our son moved to the USA. We traveled 2 to 3 times a year and wanted to fly J. JAL was half the price of QF so we flew JAL. They weren’t in OW then but you could post all flights to AA but not QF. That was the end of my liking of QF.
JAL was better than QF in every way. And AA then had a much better loyalty program so I abandoned QFF.

 

[anzen]

Sometimes its simple economics. I looked at Qantas' latest sale for flights from Melbourne to Tokyo and they are more expensive (on older planes), than flying through HK on Cathay. I don't mind the stop in HK as the lounges are nice and I can have a shower before a couple of hours on to Japan. I make the trip every 3 months and I have never seen Qantas prices even close to Cathay.

 

[bPeteb]

We do pretty much only fly Qantas, and yes it is due to my ongoing status and the lure of LTG. I'll get their next year, just after finishing full time work, and our flying habits may well change then. Best Y fare of the day and much better hotel when we get wherever we're going will be our thing.

We don't fly a huge amount but it's enough both domestically and internationally to be able to say our experiences have been positive. Unlike many on here we've been happy with both the hard and soft products, but we're also not very demanding people, so maybe we're easily pleased.

With three international and three domestic trips booked with QF over the next eight months, across Y, Y+ and J, we hope our positive experiences continue (I'm jinxing us I know).

 

[Clayton]

I applaud Matt for finding enough good things about our "partially National Carrier" , but I have an alternative viewpoint, and regard Qantas now as very low down the ladder of chosen carriers for our travel. A few of my reasons include; Qantas abandoned their best customers during the pandemic and left all International air travel to foreign airlines, they outsourced their call-centre to foreign regions, and this was after outsourcing critical maintenance off-shore just to save money instead of employ excellently trained Australians with exceptional understanding of Qantas processes, and they treat Adelaide as a rural community and only now are they half heartedly introducing an international flight to this mainland capital. Only since Mr Joyce has exited head office have their customer behaviours reduced the level of hubris, and then it has been remarkably slowly.

I will travel on Qantas when I have no other choice which is thankfully quite rare these days. And cannot for the life of me understand why anyone would pay upwards of $3K more to fly to Europe return with Qantas rather than Qatar, Singapore or Cathay Pacific.

 

[Revenge]

Another great article Matt, very interesting!

Unfortunately, hearing the Aussie accent on board isn’t a given these days.

True! I'm living in the US at the moment and recently flew home to BNE from LAX on the A330 and got a kiwi crew. Apparently they spend the night in Brisbane and then head back to AKL.

 

[Minnie Mouse]

After over 45 years of being loyal to Qantas, we have recently made the switch to Singapore Airlines' KrisFlyer. Qantas have virtually no services available between Perth and Asia, except Singapore, and Singapore Airlines offers a much better service, better planes and better food. Recently we were looking at a trip from Perth to India, and Qantas expected us to go via Melbourne on Qantas or Dubai on Emirates. That's when the decision to give Qantas the flick was made. We can't even fly to Bali on Qantas, just the awful Jetstar. We have recently flown to Asia on SQ and couldn't be happier with all the connections we can make out of Singapore.

 

[Forg]

It’s absolutely ridiculous, but home & familiarity has tremendous power … one of my mates really fancied one of his sisters’ bridesmaids so we ended-up dropping her at FRA in the middle of a Euro trip in our late 20’s … and seeing that QF livery almost evoked tears after only 3wks away from home.

When you’re at home comparing prices & buying tickets I don’t see there’s so much effect from it, mind you, I’m with others in not seeing why you’d spend extra. Maybe compared to a Middle Eastern airlines I get it, they’re owned by evil despots so I understand avoiding them on humanitarian & ethical grounds, but there still seem to be plenty of other less-disgusting choices.

 

[Berlin]

I think there’s a lot of critical media coverage in the home country of any given “flag carrier” and also “opinions” that are based on one or two flights over the past ten years in Economy class which I tend to rather avoid. Some of it tends to be very well founded (Germans hating Lufthansa, for example, have plenty of valid reasons for that) but others are not (I have plenty of complaints about Qantas never existing award seats and so on but to be honest, I can count the truly bad experiences EVER in Qantas Business on one hand and I’ve flown a lot with them since moving here about 20 years back- I can easily think of worse experiences on SQ!).

But it goes the other way round too- I know lots of Kiwis who blindly love their airline while they screwed customers up even worse than Qantas did during COVID. Turns out, many of those Air NZ lovers haven’t flown them enough to even know about it. Likewise, the Frenchmen who love Air France must be as blind as any German who loves Lufthansa but strangely they still exist.

 

[flupfront]

The National Carrier Stigma is an article written by the AFF editorial team:

The National Carrier Stigma

Many Australians hold strong feelings towards Qantas - and not necessarily positive ones. But it's not unusual for people to dislike their national carrier.

www.australianfrequentflyer.com.au

You can leave a comment or discuss this topic below.

For me there are 4 main issues affecting my love and likely usage of qantas:
1. Over priced in its premium cabins for European flights against at least equivalent and often far superior airlines
2. Inexorable degradation of value and accessibility of the frequent flyer classic rewards to these european routes
3. Increasingly replacing qantas routes with jetstar in asia and australia, an airline that is far less reliable (e.g Ive been stranded in Hokkaido by snow when all other airlines we airlines were still flying. Hokkaido winter - snow - who would have known!) and has no premium cabin (jetstar business doesnt count).
4. Qantas premium offering rorts for politicians - how does this not count as undue influence?

Over the years Ive been an enthusiastic pursuer of qantas points and status using them frequently now I go with best price and route pure.

 

[Laptop Jockey]

National carriers aren't generally viewed poorly because they are national carriers, they are viewed poorly because they generally are poorer airlines. They are typically beholden by legacy organisational cultures, structures and personnel management practises that have evolved, bloated and generally coasted along from those in place since the 1950s.
They also often coast by on reputations and rose-tinted glasses from days long gone.
It comes down to the old adage of 'If you built it from scratch, it wouldn't look like this'.
This is why newer carriers like Emirates and Qatar have proven so successful, when similarly placed legacy airlines that previously operated in the connector market and were seen as global top tier have stagnated and waned (examples like several of the South East Asian legacy carriers like Thai Airways immediately spring to mind)

Another key point regarding Qantas specifically though: Qantas never had it's glory days in the skies that people might be nostalgic for in the domestic market; Qantas was only ever an international airline until the government folded Australian Airlines/TAA into QF prior to the privatisation in 1993. And a lot of Qantas' poor reputation comes primarily from its domestic operations.

 

[Forg]

This is why newer carriers like Emirates and Qatar have proven so successful

Well also, those are built on the suffering of slaves; airlines that need to operate at a profit & don’t exist to make a despot look good have somewhat different operating parameters.

 

[justinbrett]

I think these days people are loyal to an alliance through a single frequent flyer program, not necessarily a single airline.

Obviously no choice for domestic, but I enjoy flying different oneworld carriers. I’ve never flown QF to Europe.

 

[jase05]

Obviously no choice for domestic, but I enjoy flying different oneworld carriers. I’ve never flown QF to Europe.

So do I but I hate being constantly screwed by QFF’s poor earn rate on other carriers ex Australia which is why I left them.
I have no choice for domestic but to fly QF due to work policy but it’s been nearly 2 years since I’ve flown QFi and no real desire to return to them

 

[Greg555]

Where do I start....Qantas is neck and neck with Telstra for the worst attitude, service and value towards/for it's customers in Australia.
I can't elaborate further at this time because this disgrace of a company makes me too angry to discuss. Shame Qantas, shame.

 

[bPeteb]

Where do I start....Qantas is neck and neck with Telstra for the worst attitude, service and value towards/for it's customers in Australia.
I can't elaborate further at this time because this disgrace of a company makes me too angry to discuss. Shame Qantas, shame.

Them's some strong, bolded feelings

 

[Beano]

Matt, thanks for another thoughful article. Reading some of these comments makes me realise there are a wide range of views depending on personal circumstances. As an exclusively Y traveller, I can’t pick and choose an airline for it's best J or F fare, if I want the benefits of lounge access etc. I have to stick to Qantas, for historical reasons, even if AirNZ is my national carrier, if I want the benefits of lounges etc.
At the moment I am travelling in Europe in Y. Airlines here, even premium carriers like Lufhansa or Iberia are no better than, say, Jetstar when travelling within Europe. And if you pay for luggage etc, no different to Easyjet. At least in domestic Qantas a snack and drink are included, which you pay for in Europe. I can remember being offerred free food and drink on BA for domestic flights in the UK, now no more.
I also started travelling when restrictions were being slowly lifted after Covid and appart from some small inconveniences at airports, all went well on both Qantas and AirNZ.
Jetstar has a poor reputation in NZ but I have had as many issues with Air NZ as Jetstar, which is not many.
All airlines suffer some issues so go with what suitsyo.u, and I find Qantas works for me..